Sigh. Everyone always says "cartridges!" when discussing the N64, but if they were the problem, why did the N64 do triple the sales of the Saturn, which used CDs? Yes, the decision to use cartridges was a factor, but it was not the deciding factor.

The real issue was the lack of third-party support. The N64 had a very small library, and nearly everything that was at all decent was produced by Nintendo (or Rare). There were painful software droughts in the N64's history, when months and months would go by without anything being released. If you think the Wii has been going through a software drought of late, it was nothing compared to those times. The N64 launced in America with two games - TWO! - and no other games released for three months afterwards. Since software sales drive hardware sales, it was inevitable that other systems would pull ahead.

Of course, that begs the question of why didn't the N64 have good third party support, which can be broken down thusly:

- Late to market. (Playstation released two years earlier in Japan. And people complain about the 360 getting an "unfair" head start!")
- Nintendo execs arrogantly burning bridges with Japanese third parties.
- Notoriously difficult to develop games for.
- More expensive to develop games for.
- Games not on CDs. (This was the least important factor.)

Once third parties started moving towards the Playstation, it created a snowball effect. Why spend more money and more time to develop a game for the N64 when the Playstation - which had been out for 18 months longer - had a larger install base and was cheaper in cost? People like to point to Square and Final Fantasy 7, but this was only the best-known example of Japanese developers embracing Sony's platform. It was not ONE game that made the difference, but dozens of franchises from all the top third-parties (Namco, Capcom, Konami, etc.) all moving simultaneously to a rival platform. The N64 actually had a higher percentage of quality games, but for every one game on the N64, there would be five games on the Playstation, and odds were you would find something you liked there. Quantity trumped quality at first, and later the Playstation got plenty of quality games on its own.

This probably went too long, but I hate how most people always want to simplify a complex situation to "CDs".

@sulla
you realize most of your points is related to the use of cartridges?
- Nintendo execs arrogantly burning bridges with Japanese third parties.
(force the use of cartrigdes)
- Notoriously difficult to develop games for.
(lack of space) what contribute to that?? you guess it! the use of cartridge
- More expensive to develop games for.
Why? yep you guess it right, cd cost $1 or less to produce and cartridges? dont even what to mention the price of it
- Games not on CDs. (This was the least important factor.)
and again related to you know what :) cartridge again

btw FMW was the new trend and this will answer your nortoriously difficult to develop games for because everyone want FMW in their games at that time and cartridges dont provide enough space for it

the games cost $60-70 in those days.. thats like almost $90 now for a SINGLE game..

plus FMV looked so sweet on psone/saturn.

Another factor was the super low texture memory(4KB) which put off a lot of devs.

Mario 64, zelda and goldeneye pretty much made the system worth owning but not enough to topple the saturn/psone in japan or psone worldwide

PS1 dominated the market by having the best library. Wii did it with a friggin controller.

Smash Bros was fun but I'm a fan of traditional fighters. I had more fun with Street Fighter Alpha 3 than Smash Bros personally.

OoT was not the best game of all. That's just an opinion and obviously not everyone agrees.

PS1 definitely wasn't more powerful but on occasion it had games that looked very impressive even compared to the best looking N64 games.

No matter when Zelda came out, it would require much more to change the tide of the N64. Not everyone wants to play Nintendo developed games and that was the best reason to own a N64.

Sorry, I seriously don't agree.

I developed games on *both* platforms - and while the PSX had issues (had to do software poly clipping and tesselation for perspective correction, etc) - in terms of "raw" power the PSX could do around double the number of polygons than the N64 did.

The other real issue with the N64 - the texture cache was a whopping 4k. The PSX had a more 'open' architecture, and you could use the RSX RAM for frame buffer, texture cache (etc) - as needed.

The PSX also had a couple of co-processors (MPEG decoder, IO chip) - whereas the N64 had a really "weak" CPU, and it sucked up cycles for music, sound and more.

...

The *core* reason for the failure was definitely the media - but if you look at some of the excellent late-generation PSX games (Spyro was always amazing IMO) they are technically leaps ahead of the N64.

The PSX also had more RAM (something that isn't commonly known) - the RAM was just segmented into system, video, audio (etc) RAM - whereas the N64 had its main bank.

(disclaimer: all these numbers are from memory, and if I make a mistake... don't shoot me :>)

Cartridge technology has advanced significantly since the N64. Size-wise it has gone up 2-3 orders of magnitude - and for the same size memory, cost has come down 2-3 orders of magnitude.

They could bring a N64 'II' out now - and it wouldn't suffer from any of the same issues that the original did. Imagine a Wii without a disc drive, but just takes DS sized games in a slot.

Unsolved mystery that is unexplainable.

We cant explain why some consoles sell through the roof and others dont.

Because Nintedo was dealing with Sony and than betrayed them and Sony launched their own console. Sony actually agreed to make CD drive for N64 but than Nintendo betrayed them and went to Philiphs. Sony was pissed off and they launched their own console. Nintendo shouldn't mess with Sony back than.


Don't you guys remember??

Betrayed? Maybe Sony didn't like what Nintendo was doing. Sony had their own ideas and it was a success.

The CD drive was for the SNES not the N64. What does that have to do with one console selling over another?