Thread 11981890

>The console was first released in Japan on June 23, 1996.[3] Though the initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out on the first day, Nintendo successfully avoided a repeat of the Super Famicom launch day pandemonium, in part by using a wider retail network which included convenience stores.[51] The remaining 200,000 units of the first production run shipped on June 26 and 30, with almost all of them reserved ahead of time.[52]

>Its American launch was wildly successful, breaking records - its first day sales were significantly higher than PlayStation's and Saturn's respective launches the year before.[57]

>Time named it the 1996 Machine of the Year, saying the machine had "done to video-gaming what the 707 did to air travel". The magazine said the console achieved "the most realistic and compelling three-dimensional experience ever presented by a computer". Time credited the Nintendo 64 with revitalizing the video game market, "rescuing this industry from the dustbin of entertainment history". The magazine suggested that the Nintendo 64 would play a major role in introducing children to digital technology in the final years of the 20th century.

How did the Nintendo 64 have such a successful launch and yet still fail?

It's not a case like 6th gen where PS2 was the clear winner from day 1. Nintendo had every advantage on their side and were poised to win, but by 1998 they were well behind the PS1. Was it arrogance?

who cares? is this a retro sales board or a retro games board? like ask on /biz/ or something good leaf man

>>11981890 (OP)
The hardcore fans, the base, would get it first day.

Others... would wait and see. And they saw.

>>11981890 (OP)
97 was a big playstation year

>>11981890 (OP)
3D0 and Dreamcast had strong launches too

Dude, beating Saturn's launch isn't a high bar, and PS1 had shit for games in 1995. N64 launched with one of the best games of all time

How deranged do you have to be to think the N64 failed? It's the fourth best selling console of the 90's.

>>11981890 (OP)
>How did the Nintendo 64 have such a successful launch and yet still fail?
Well first off I'd point out that the N64 didn't really fail in the US, it was nearly 1:1 as popular as the proceeding Super Nintendo, North American accounted for almost 2/3rds of all N64 sales. It's in Europe and Japan where the N64 crashed and burned and anytime you see someone confused about why "the N64 has so much nostalgia" they are pretty much always European.
>NA: 20.63 million
>JP: 5.54 million
>EU/AU: 6.75 million
The big question is what caused the massive fall off in non US sales.

Most 3rd parties prioritizing Sony did not help and Japan's most popular genre, JRPG's, skipping the system was a death blow. Also the Japanese PlayStation got a lot more games than the US one, a ton never made it over here including a lot of arcade games, the N64's library on the other hand was smaller there than in the West... and it was already pretty small in the West.
As for Europe I guess at a few reasons. First off Nintendo was less entrenched there than the US and Japan, Micro Computers and Sega were bigger names. Second, the PlayStation had quite the head start launching in September 95 not far behind the US launch, the N64 didn't show up until March 97 and with only a handful of games while Sony was well established.
So I guess the last question is why did the N64 keep it's popularity in the US? Part of it was just the massive child population of the US and Nintendo's reputation as the kid friendly console. Another is that the US was rich enough that buying 2 consoles was not uncommon, a lot of people had both. The N64 was the 4 player party console and snowball rolling down a hill tends to grow, lots of people went over to their friends, played Mario Kart, Smash, Goldeneye, ect, and had to get one for themselves even if they had a PlayStation. Finally, unlike Japan, losing the JRPG and Arcade markets was not as big of a hit and a lot of popular US franchises made the jump.

>PS1 1997:
>FF7
>FF tactics
>Castlevania SOTN
>Tomb raider 2
>Oddworld
>Crash 2
>Gran turismo
>Alundra
>Klonoa
>Gradius Gaiden
>And many more

Nintendo : i don't feel so good...

>>11981970
>As for Europe I guess at a few reasons. First off Nintendo was less entrenched there than the US and Japan, Micro Computers and Sega were bigger names.

That's for Britain. Not the whole Europe. Almost every country at the time was its own market some of which Nintendo did great, and making generalizations about "Europe" back then would be like making generalizations about "America" while grouping the US, Canada, Bresil and Argentina all together.

>>11981935
>How deranged do you have to be to think the N64 failed? It's the fourth best selling console of the 90's.
High expectations. The US went from absolutely dominating the mid to late 80's market in the NES days with 62 million sales to being the industry leader in the early 90's with the SNES selling 49mil against the Sega Genesis's 35mil, enter the late 90's and now against Sony they are in a distant second selling 32 million against the PlayStation which garnered over 100 million sales.
This trend did not go unnoticed and while the N64 did respectable sales the predicted downfall of Nintendo in the home console market was an increasingly popular talking point that continued to pick up steam in the GameCube era which dropped almost 10 million sales compared to the N64 before it. It wasn't until the Wii sold over 100mil and temporarily revitalized their home console brand that people cooled it with the Nintendo console doomerism... until the Wii U of course dropped console sales to new lows.
So yeah, while the N64 was financially a success, it was also the console where Nintendo lost its dominant status and the first big step in the decline that would see the end of dedicated Nintendo home consoles. In a sense, the people who thought Nintendo should dump consoles and focus solely on handhelds both won out and lost when Nintendo made the smartest move possible and combined the two.

>>11981935
This. Everyone I knew had one and everyone loved it. The idea that “it failed” is fucking nonsense kek

>>11981987
If you have any data / opinions on which European countries the N64 was popular in, I'd like to see it.

>>11982042
>The US went from absolutely dominating the mid to late 80's market in the NES days
"The US" where was my head at here? Maybe because I was just talking about how well the N64 did there... anyway I mean Nintendo.

It didn't "fail," it's just that Sony had many many more games of top quality than the N64.

>>11982113
ps1 had many many many more shovelware than n64

>>11982373
>don't buy shovelware
I've solved the shovelware problem.

>>11982380
doesnt stop it existing

>>11981935
People here can only think in extremes
If a console isn't the best selling of it's gen, it was a complete failure
According to this board the Xbox and GameCube were disastrous commercial failures

>>11982048
Sales data per country is hard to come by

Looking at total sales for 'Europe' the PSX outsold the N64 almost 10 to 1.
But looking per country it differs quite a lot. In western europe that differense seems to be smaller.
I know at least from Germany that the N64 was well represented in stores and it sold just as well as the SNES, just that the PSX outperformed it by a lot.

Germany:
SNES: 1.4 million
MegaDrive: 0.8 million
N64: 1.5 million
PSX: 4 million

UK:
SNES: 1 million
MegaDrive: 3 million
N64: 1.5 million
PSX: 7 million

I suspect its Eastern Europe where the N64 had no presence at all and all they knew was the PSX

>>11982048
>>11983194
I wasn't talking about the N64 per se, that ship sailed in Europe when they decided to have a MARCH 1997 release date.

I was referring to him claiming "Sega and Micro Computers" were "bigger than Nintendo" in Europe, prior to the N64. That just wasn't true for many many countries.

IIRC for France, pre PSX the wikipedia numbers are like "60% Nintendo, 40% Sega" but you'll find that the numbers are estimates by literally-who, and those numbers really don't reflect the experience I've had all my life which was more like 80-20 in Nintendo's favours. Parents wouldn't call all consoles "Nintendos", like they did in the US and even during the PSX gen, if the market share was that close to 50-50 with Sega.

>>11983234
I agree there were big differences per country, and even then there'd be local differences.
Nintendo had a good dominance in many parts of europe which is different from their own local experience.

Also makes me wonder how the split between nintendo-sega-etc was per state in the US, was it somewhat uniform or did some states heavily favour one over the other?

>>11981890 (OP)
> first day sales
lol
>time magazine
>renowned for taking money from corporations to advertise trash as "news"
lmao

>>11983356
>was it somewhat uniform
pretty much, but this is a period where people would buy nintendo's product and sega's so they're not missing out on anything. some autistic nintendo spammers here would love it if we all believed that every household in the US had a nes/snes, piracy wasn't possible, and no shovelware. thankfully we live in reality and not fantasy land and we remember that nintendo's products were aimed at small children and bootlegging, unlicensed software and piracy was rampant.

I got N64 first then Playstation the next year with FF7, and from then on almost all my gaming was either on PS1 or replaying older games on older systems. The last new game I got for N64 was Rogue Squadron, I rented others. Also, you just reminded me games used to be orderabke through conbini.

>>11981890 (OP)
Remembering me getting the n64 from my cousin who was a ranger at fort benning one Christmas. Dude was a champ. And my best friend got the PlayStation. Parents ended up getting a pc around this time that could run shit like Jedi Knights 2. My buddy would bring over the PlayStation when I had the house to myself and we would just rotate from one console to the other and pc mixed. Eating so good back then! Mario party to Alpha 3 to rotating some dark forces. Good stuff

>>11983194
>I suspect its Eastern Europe where the N64 had no presence at all and all they knew was the PSX
Poland here, can confirm N64 was the weird rich kid console.

>>11981935
It performed worse than the two previous consoles and cut Minoru Arakawa out of the succession plan when Yamauchi retired.

>>11984094
So that's how we ended up with Shitoru Shitwata...