Nintendo’s bigger mistake: sticking to carts for the N64 vs betraying Sony?

[VeePs]

Lol @ "betraying" Sony

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Betraying Sony? You're joking right?

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Anyone voting for "betraying Sony" clearly fails to comprehend the situation.

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Nintendo shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about the betrayal, did not want to purchase Nintendo's system, nor will they purchase any of their games. That was HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Nintendo alienated an entire market with that move.

 

[fiendcode]

Even with CDs the N64 would still be the programming nightmare that it was. So it was always destined to underperform.

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This wouldn't have been an impediment to anything really, the N64's core issue with garnering 3rd party support was media cost. A CD-ROM equipped N64 probably would've held on to FFVII, DQVII and everything else.

AFAIK Sony would hold publishing rights on the CD games but NOT the Nintendo IP. It wasn't a very good deal for Nintendo but they agreed to it! No one forced them to!

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It sounds a bit like the setup NEC & Hudson entered into for PC Engine.

 

[DGS]

I don't mind. In the end PlayStation was a big push for video games, especially in Europe. But N64 and NGC had a hard time and PlayStation is one of the most valuable gamingIPs. So Nintendo's move had consequences, that's for sure.

 

[TheBeardedOne]

I liked the carts and still do. They were iconic, worked for the system and were durable. Not that I was rough on them, but at that age many were.

I remember saying how I hoped discs wouldn't become the norm back then, because they weren't as durable. Then again, it was necessary and inevitable...and all of mine are flawless because I'm careful.

 

[Raonak]

They probably should have actually read over their contract with sony before signing with them.

 

[Xater]

A N64 with CDs would have been a bitter choice. They wouldn't have the technical limitations of the carts and the games would have been cheaper. Fast loading was cool, but didn't outweigh the problems of carts.

 

[Deleted member 5535]

None as Nintendo still is very successful even with it and other things.

 

[UltraMagnus]

It's not like they couldn't have done carts + CD-ROM. The Saturn had both a cartridge slot and a CD drive, it just didn't use the cart port much.

 

[RM8]

I hate optical media so selfishly I love that they stuck to cartridges. Of all consoles I've bought, I've experienced issues with PS1, PS2, GCN and Wii. No disc reading issues with my PS3 (it was my HDD which died on me) and WiiU (maybe because it didn't get a ton of use), but I'm glad I left discs behind by going PC+handheld.

 

[AztecComplex]

It's not like they couldn't have done carts + CD-ROM. The Saturn had both a cartridge slot and a CD drive, it just didn't use the cart port much.

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I thought the cart port of the Saturn was used only for memory expansion and crap like that. Did Saturn games ever came in cartridge form?!?! I've never heard about that if true!

 

[Pocer]

BETRAYAL

lol

Wow! Sony Fan

 

[Crazymoogle]

I thought the cart port of the Saturn was used only for memory expansion and crap like that. Did Saturn games ever came in cartridge form?!?! I've never heard about that if true!

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No games, but apart from the memory cart there was the Netlink cart. Not sure if you can boot from the cart slot for games; I would treat it like an accessory slot.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

It's not like they couldn't have done carts + CD-ROM. The Saturn had both a cartridge slot and a CD drive, it just didn't use the cart port much.

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That sounds like a good way to balloon the cost of your hardware or minimal extra benefits. Sticking with one or the other in the mid 90s still seemed like a slightly more sensible approach, even if Nintendo bet on the wrong horse.

 

[AniHawk]

sega went with discs and had a shitload of support in japan. the saturn outsold the n64 over there. if nintendo had gone with discs, they would at least have had multiplatform releases, which were actually pretty regular between 1994 and 1997, including stuff from konami and capcom such as mega man 8 and castlevania: symphony of the night, respectively.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Oh, to answer the thread, it's clearly the choice to go carts. Nintendo just didn't understand at the time

1) That the price of RAM was going to tank
2) That publishers were insanely interested in lowering their cost of materials.

Lots of books to cover the whole topic already, but essentially N64 was the most expensive 3rd party platform in the world. Expensive carts, expensive saves, and a system late to the market. Using CD would have cost them a lot upfront but ultimately made 3rd parties a lot happier and eager to stick with Nintendo or cross-port, at the least.

The stickier point is if they would have stuck with SGI. Ultimately Nintendo's path should have been the same as Sony's: 32bit, reasonable specs, 4MB RAM, but they burned a lot of time and money on the SGI pipedream, and it cost them in dev support (a lot cheaper to program for the PC-attached PS kit than to get the SGI Indy and a load of carts).

 

[ShinobiBk]

Sticking with carts for the N64, quite clearly.

The truth is Sony was always going to enter the console market. The whole Nintendo Play Station thing just sped up the process.

It really wouldn't have mattered much if the N64 used CD's. Sticking with carts led to a mass exodus of 3rd parties off of Nintendo consoles.

 

[Personablue]

Choosing cartridge is obviously the biggest mistake. FF VII would be on Nintendo and many many games which started using FMV would also be on Nintendo.
Again choosing mini DVD for GameCube was another mistake.

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

If Nintendo didn't "betray" Sony; Nintendo wouldn't be a console manufacturer today.

Sony did Nintendo dirty on that contract. Nintendo did the right thing by looking for an out.

 

[TheDutchSlayer]

Not buying Rare is the biggest mistake.
Rare made the N64 a better system and could have made amazing GC and wii games.

 

[Revolsin]

PS1 won that gen pretty much purely on the basis of CD, which was the thing that made a lot of game companies jump ship so they could make bigger games. The biggest and most damning to Nintendo example of this was Final Fantasy 7.

So yeah 'betraying' Sony would've done nothing if they had stuck with CDs.

 

[The Adder]

It's not like they couldn't have done carts + CD-ROM. The Saturn had both a cartridge slot and a CD drive, it just didn't use the cart port much.

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And what a smashing success that console was

(I mean, it mostly died due to Sega's general mismanagement more than the system itself, but still.)

 

[Deleted member 10737]

If Nintendo didn't "betray" Sony; Nintendo wouldn't be a console manufacturer today.

Sony did Nintendo dirty on that contract. Nintendo did the right thing by looking for an out.

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yep. that contract was designed to eliminate nintendo as a competitor. yamauchi was very smart to "betray" sony back then.

 

[nicolasacmf]

Again with the "betraying" bullshit. Please stop spreading that. The deal would have given Sony immense control over Nintendo's own IPs. Nintendo was right to jump ship.

 

[ThorHammerstein]

Betraying?

Not wanting to giving up rights to their IPs is betraying?

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Apparently so. ;)

 

[Vaibhav]

Sony would ve jumped sooner or later. It is in their dna, going by their success in music, cinema industry.

 

[jts]

Out of those 2 choices, going with cartridges is the one. With Sony the mistake wasn't getting the hell out of a bad deal, was not securing a better deal to begin with, to and try to stave them off for longer.

None of them seems too taxing on Nintendo, they are still cruising. Much to OP's dislike.

 

[lupinko]

The third console curse.

Arrogant Nitnendo with the N64 (and echo cursed on their "second" third console the Wii U).
Arrogant Sony with PS3.
Arrogant MS with Xbox One.

The industry continues to follow in Nintendo's footsteps lol.

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The Genesis was the third Sega console, and it was the most successful of the Sega consoles.

 

[FrostyLemon]

Nintendo shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about the betrayal, did not want to purchase Nintendo's system, nor will they purchase any of their games. That was HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Nintendo alienated an entire market with that move.

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This sounds like an anime you just made up.

While all this was going on Pokemon took over the world.

https://uk.ign.com/articles/1999/12/01/japan-vs-us-sales

 

[Deleted member 43]

...betraying?

It was a business deal.

 

[rAndom]

Doesn't really matter in the end anyway. Nintendo saved itself from Sony. And they did recover from dwindling hardware sales ever since the cart era (they still use carts today anyway lol).

In hindsight, it's better for the consumers that the decisions made by Nintendo back then led to where they are now today. Two big competitors making different innovations to push the industry further.

 

[Datajoy]

The Genesis was the third Sega console, and it was the most successful of the Sega consoles.

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The exception that proves the rule.

 

[D.Lo]

Neither was a mistake. They were tactical decisions that had positives and negatives.

The biggest issue with CD was not its inherent superiority (it was cheaper and had heaps more data, but had crappy load times, and less publishing/manufacturing revenue for Nintendo). The biggest issue was Japanese devs became obsessed with cringey FMV and multimedia junk so it was what they wanted.

The Wii U was Nintendo's biggest mistake, much larger than anything to do with the N64, which was still a hugely profitable console and did games that would/could not have been done as well on a CD console.

 

[MisterHero]

There was absolutely no point in working with Sony. They wanted the rights to the CD-based software. Nintendo "betrayed" them (lmao) but the deal was shit to begin with.

There's no point in complaining about cartridge prices. Most publishers are greedier than ever.

 

[RPG_Fanatic]

You can call the Nintendo pulling out of the deal with Sony a betrayal, but it is not like Sony wasn't being sneaky with the contract. In the end the deal was very bad for Nintendo, and sticking to it would have been worse for them.

Sticking with Cart definitely caused bigger issues. The 3rd party issues are a hole that Nintendo dug themselves.

 

[Celine]

CD was a mean to an end for Sony it wasn't the thing that put Sony on top.
The change from a business model where the first-party software was the main driving force behind a console initial momentum to a business model that instead relied on third-party software to create momentum (but with first-party strongly pushing their ecosystem by aggressively cutting console price as soon as possible, marketing and co-marketing, buying exclusivity of potential hit games etc) was what put Sony on top and screwed the other pure videogame console makers.
CD was just one of many factors Sony adopted to to garner the upper hand in third-party software support.

Nintendo decisions may seem foolish but they were rationale within their perspective at the time.
Nintendo built their empire on the lock of cartridge manufacturing and first-party huge software pie (just a single publisher, that is Nintendo, have almost always sold >30% of total software sales on Nintendo consoles).
Nintendo chose what seemed the safe route (tried and true) but the times were different.
Nintendo believed in a single strong that would lead the spread of the hardware with its software, Sony on the other hand view the console maker as the strong company that would push the ecosystem but on the back of third-party support.
That generation was defined by a paradigm shift more than simply the adoption of a new storage medium.

 

[Deleted member 36622]

If anything Sony betrayed Nintendo.

Nintendo was the leader in the console space, Sony decided to do their thing and said "either you give us your IPs or we're competitors now" and really the role of Sony with PS1 was essentially stealing third parties from Nintendo because at the time Sony didn't have a first party production.

But Nintendo's biggest mistake was clearly ditching CD-ROM, that was such an arrogant move, they thought the industry would have followed Nintendo no matter what, so they deserved to lose that gen because of that.

 

[jts]

Nintendo could still own manufacturing and offer the advantages of optical disc: introduce a disc-based proprietary format, like they were going to with the 64DD. I think Nintendo also believed in the advantages of solid state memory by N64's release.

The Saturn has failed yes, but the poster was right on the money. A cartridge+disc N64 (which was that the N64+64DD was going to become) would be brilliant. But pricier. Maybe way pricier.

 

[Deleted member 4518]

It's not a betrayal, it's not like Sony and Nintendo are two friends, they're businesses. Poor business decision, sure. Betrayal sounds stupid as hell.

 

[Regulus Tera]

It was CD ROMs. Phillips may have made shitty games, but the technology they had was competent.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

Betraying?

Not wanting to giving up rights to their IPs is betraying?

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They let Phillips use them.

 

[fiendcode]

The Genesis was the third Sega console, and it was the most successful of the Sega consoles.

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Only in Japan, which was also the only region it failed. Curse holds.

 

[Deleted member 36708]

GC mini disc.... EASILY. They had the powerful console and fucked it up. Didn't get GTA that gen which screwed up their sales a lot. I love Nintendo but somehow they always mess things up trying to be too innovative and go against the grain. Modern times amazing switch console... worst voice chat solution anyone could think of. It's like clockwork.

 

[steviestar3]

I feel like the Playstation would have happened with or without Nintendo's involvement. Sony had been seeking to enter the video game space for a while. The cartridge fuckup is all on Nintendo, though, so I vote for that.

 

[PrimeBeef]

What about the Wii U then? I'd say Nintendo were quite arrogant after the immense success with rhe Wii, resulting in a disaster called the Wii U.

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I wouldn't call it arrogance. They wanted to get into the HD scene and made a mistake with the naming of a product which caused confusion amonst many of the non traditional gamers they brought into the fold. If it were called something different things may have been a bit different. At least they are willing to take chances and fail from time to time.

 

[Kyzer]

How is "betraying Sony" (lol) even a mistake? It's like saying Nintendo was offered the privilege of becoming shadily absorbed by Sony, and they should have been grateful. The idea that they created their own worst enemy by not falling for it and calling it betrayal is really hilarious, you gotta really believe in Sonys inherent superiority

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

The third console curse.

Arrogant Nitnendo with the N64 (and echo cursed on their "second" third console the Wii U).
Arrogant Sony with PS3.
Arrogant MS with Xbox One.

The industry continues to follow in Nintendo's footsteps lol.

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Please. Once again a Sega console ahead of its time with future consoles claiming all the credit.

 

[Galactor]

A big part of mario 64 was just jumping in the picture and instantly being in the world..and people knew it was because of the cart...PSX loading times on a mario game would have killed that premium feeling, but you need to have lived it to understand that. Nintendo preserved quality coming from the SNES which didnt have any flaws for a 16 bit console.

 

[Bioshocker]

I wouldn't call it arrogance. They wanted to get into the HD scene and made a mistake with the naming of a product which caused confusion amonst many of the non traditional gamers they brought into the fold. If it were called something different things may have been a bit different. At least they are willing to take chances and fail from time to time.

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My perception is that the were high after the success of the Wii and thought they could pull it off once again: an underpowered console, a gimmicky controller and a party game packed in that was to be for Wii U what Wii Sports was for the Wii. When that didn't work they had nothing until almost a year later when Pikmin 3 and then SM3DW launched. The Wii U was already dead at that point.

The naming was bad but I think people overestimate its importance. It played a part but was far frmo the most important factor. It was the whole concept of the Wii U built around the Gamepad that just didn't attract people. It was flawed, and Nintendo were unable to respond when they saw it didn't work (compare to Microsoft's actions taken after the Xbox One reveal). Nintendo created a gamepad with a screen and they couldn't even justify it most of the time. Games like Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong Country: TF and many offers doesn't even use it. Just like Microsoft couldn't justify the Kinect camera for the Xbox One. They had no killer app.

So yes,I do think you could call it arrogance. Just watch this interview with Reggie before launch.

 

[Griffith]

A bit less corporate fanboyism would be nice.

I think that their decision to go with cartridges ended up hurting them more in the short term as with CDs as certain key games that had a massive impact during that generation would have been hard/impossible to achieve without them (like FF7). The loss of Square's support, to mention one, and missing out on key new franchises from other Japanese third party developers is what ended up hurting Nintendo the most during the 32bit era IMO.

In short term, not going with CDs hurt them the most, In long term deciding not to go with Sony and instead choosing Panasonic Philips was one of the worst decisions they could have made because the result of that partnership were some of the worst titles ever associated with Nintendo and the result of not uniting with Sony resulted in the birth of their biggest competitor.

 

[AztecComplex]

Only in Japan, which was also the only region it failed. Curse holds.

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Omg you're right! The Genesis was second internationally and it was a success but in Japan it was third and it was a huge failure there.

Then the fourth Japanese Sega Console (Saturn) actually didn't fare badly in Japan (finished ahead of the N64) but the third international Sega console (Saturn) was a colossal failure!

Curse holds!