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[Stumpokapow]

Here's the heaviest part of the N64/PSX war in the United States; from N64 launch onward :

GRAY=PSX
GREEN=N64
BLACK=SAT
(Click to make bigger)
Source NPD

Thanks for the post. Very interesting info and confirms basically what I was saying, that it wasn't that the N64 fell off but rather than the PSX took off suddenly and never looked back. I also notice it's your first post despite being a long-time registered user. Welcome!

 

[kurbaan]

I was out of high school and working at an independent game store in those years. I sold so many copies of FF7 &Metal Gear Solid. Every time someone wanted to know what MGS was, I'd throw it on our kiosk and give them a run-through of the insertion area. Minds were blown daily. Nintendo 64 couldn't compete later.

The original FF7 promo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbClDIVCpmg

I remember my uncle was gonna buy me a N64 but then I went to the library and got FF7 for PC and played it. My mind was blown I couldnt finish it in a week and had to give it back. But right then I said "Need a Playstation".

 

[KillerMan91]

Europe didn't get the N64 until well into 1997. That was the time the PSX became affordable and got its second generation wave of games. Also, this meant for Nintendo that there was over a year of nothingness on European shelves as the 16-bit consoles started to fade away when 1996 went along. Mario RPG for example didn't even make the cut. I was a member of Club Nintendo at the time, but I got a refund because the magazine died as there was only dog shit to write about.

I remember there was huge build up hype in Europe at first. Lots of gamers here thought 'once N64 hits the inferior PSX and Saturn are done for'. But I think the waiting while Sony actually delivering made this thought fade away. Plus the rapidly decreasing third party support, Capcom and its IP all went to Sony. Nintendo was rambling about this 'dream team' of developers. Which was basically Midway/Williams, Rare and a few others, pretty much like 'we aint got shit left, but..'.

The N64 launch was still a reasonable success because of Mario 64, but then a long drought happened and most gamers except for true Nintendo fans quickly stopped caring about Nintendo in general. This was the turning point for them as a whole, as we know Nintendo never recovered in the core gaming space and their third party support never went back to SNES era goodness. Back then at college, we laughed about the N64. Its games looked muddy and childish. No one gave 2 shits about it. Which was weird as the SNES was a tremendous success, but I guess gaming itself changed right there.

SNES and NES really didn't sell that well in Europe either. Playstation was first big commercially succesful console in Europe. Sold over 40 million units in Europe when before it best selling console was Genesis with meager 8 million (and most of those in UK). People played with Amiga and PC before PS1 made console gaming big in Europe.

 

[Grayman]

What I enjoyed most about the n64 was the multiplayer games. That also meant that I myself, and 3/4s of every friend circle in the world had no use for the system.

The Playstation didn't really get a head start on the N64 as the early games weren't great and the market was all over the place. Saturn, 3do, and Jaguar were on the market and recent failures like 32x and virtual boy were fresh. The N64 did well out of the gate with Mario and the Playstation started finding ground with Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Twisted Metal 2, before exploding with FF VII.

 

[ToxicAdam]

rofl

Are you also the sort of person that reads magazines and comic books at the store without paying for them?

Not anymore .... but I was.

 

[OldAsUrSock]

GAF, the only place where even past console wars get fought over.

 

[Chamber]

Here's the heaviest part of the N64/PSX war in the United States; from N64 launch onward :

GRAY=PSX
GREEN=N64
BLACK=SAT
(Click to make bigger)
Source NPD

Dear God, dat flatline...

 

[A Black Falcon]

Here's the heaviest part of the N64/PSX war in the United States; from N64 launch onward :

GRAY=PSX
GREEN=N64
BLACK=SAT
(Click to make bigger)
Source NPD

Very nice graph. The N64 did quite solidly up until sometime in 2000, certainly... the reason why overall in the generation in the Americas it was 66/33 PS1/N64 was because of how the PS1 sold for many years longer (the N64 faded out in 2000-2002, the PS1 in 2000-2005...). That built up a lot of base to push its margin of victory well above where it had been during the core of the generation.

Also, just look at that Saturn graph. Right when FF7 released and Bernie Stolar said "The Saturn is not our future" at E3 1997, the line hits bottom and stays there except for a miniscule blip at December 1997. Thanks, Bernie, and Sega for getting into that state in the first place. It was a somewhat competitive system in 1995-1996, as those solid Dec. 1996 sales show, but it bottomed out early thanks to Sega being stupid (and giving up), mostly.

FFV II seems to have been a really big factor and in Japan Saturn slowed down heavily after this launch.

I think it was the one-two punch of FF7 and the announcement that Dragon Quest VII would be a Playstation exclusive, really. Grandia was a good game, but it was no match for that pair. The Saturn indeed started fading in Japan after FF7's release; it did well there in '94-96, but afterwards, the Playstation really did take over.

Yeah that's another way of putting it. It was quite insane that the console just kept selling more and more when the generation should have been winding up. It sold over 1/3 of its total AFTER the PS2 was out, which is just unprecedented. These new massive game series popped up really late in its life, like Tony Hawk, Silent Hill, Spyro etc.

Yeah, the N64 was quite competitive in the '90s and sold well, but faded out quickly after that, while the PS1 just kept selling and selling and selling...

In the Americas Nintendo shipped more SNES than N64

SNES- 23.35m
N64- 20.63n

Maybe N64 outsold SNES in US only.

Yeah, considering that those are Americas numbers, not US only, it's entirely possible that those numbers are correct, but that also the N64 sold more than the SNES did here. The N64 did well in the US, but it'd make sense if it wasn't nearly as successful as the SNES was in other parts of the Americas.

(On an unrelated note, it'd be interesting to know for sure whether the SNES or Genesis sold more in the US, and the SNES or Genesis/MD more in the Americas as a whole. We legitimately do not know the answer to either one of those questions.)

Other than the PS2 (which was strong out the gate, and remained that way for close to a decade), all of Sony's consoles have back-loaded sales patterns.Nintendo comes out of the gate strong, releasing the majority of their big first party titles in the first 3 years or so of a console's lifespan. Sony takes awhile to gear up, and relies a lot more on third party software to drive sales (especially in the cases of the PS1 and PSP).



NPD is US only, while Nintendo shipment numbers are the entire hemisphere. Both statements could be right.

Good points here, you're probably right on both counts.

1997 = Blast Corps, Doom 64, Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart 64, StarFox 64, Turok Dinosaur Hunter.

These compete just fine.

San Francisco Rush as well, as well as some successful second-tier games like Bomberman 64. Yeah, the N64 had a great 1997 lineup.

That's why Nintendo lost that gen. I understand their reasoning for wanting to stick with carts, but cheap CD production and memory constraints of carts saw devs (especially Square with their CG heavy games) ultimately decide to go to Sony - not to mention Nintendo's arrogance with 3rd parties at the time. If Nintendo went with CDs, I really believe that gen would've turned out much differently.

Nintendo did fine in the US using cartridges. In Japan maybe not having CDs made more of a difference, but here? The advantages are so much greater than the negatives, going with carts was a great decision!

GAF, the only place where even past console wars get fought over.

If you think that, you've never been to a classic gaming focused forum. Just look at sites like Sega-16 and probably Atari-Age...

 

[LakeEarth]

1997 happened. Sure there are some major games in that year, but it was usually the only game to come out that month. I think 3 games came out in January/Feburary (NA schedule). The big winter game was Diddy Kong Racing, a good game, but a blip compared to the PSX winter release schedule.

Plus, the N64 was missing vital genres. RPGs, sports sims, and racing sims, namely.

 

[DjangoReinhardt]

I honestly had no idea N64 was that successful. I always thought it was a complete failure in the US and Japan, while the PS1 dominated worldwide.

In my circles, the N64 was well-regarded as as second console. You'd spend 85% of your time playing PS1, but that 15% of N64 time was fantastic.

 

[Ol No Bones]

The N64 has been like every console since then. Proprietary media, lack of 3rd party releases and strong 1st party releases. They got lucky with the Wii but got unlucky with the Wii U.

I know that people have been throwing the rhetoric for a whole but would it be so bad if Nintendo went 3rd party? I love some of the franchises but their hardware just can't compete with the other guys. I'm really curious what people honestly think.

 

[MercuryLS]

not an RPG fan, I take it? the ps1 just might be the strongest console in that area pretty much ever.

ff7 put jrpgs on the map, but even outside of FF square and others totally killed it with xenogears, vagrant story, lunar, suikoden, chrono cross, persona2, grandia, dq7, etc

Nope, dislike RPG's. Didn't like tank controls either, so that rules out RE and DC.

 

[Ol No Bones]

In my circles, the N64 was well-regarded as as second console. You'd spend 85% of your time playing PS1, but that 15% of N64 time was fantastic.

The n64 had the best multiplayer experiences.

 

[A Black Falcon]

1997 happened. Sure there are some major games in that year, but it was usually the only game to come out that month. I think 3 games came out in January/Feburary (NA schedule). The big winter game was Diddy Kong Racing, a good game, but a blip compared to the PSX winter release schedule.

Goldeneye was a 1997 release and sold better than almost every game on the Playstation, you know.

 

[Grayman]

(On an unrelated note, it'd be interesting to know for sure whether the SNES or Genesis sold more in the US, and the SNES or Genesis/MD more in the Americas as a whole. We legitimately do not know the answer to either one of those questions.)

This must be with worldwide or americas numbers but I remember hearing that Snes and Gen were neck and neck in lifetime sales until Sega pulled the plug a year earlier than Nintendo did, a similar situation to the PSX having way higher LTD than N64 because of the lingering sales?

 

[teh_pwn]

Playstation went into beast most in late 1997 and didn't stop until 2008. We had brand new Final Fantasies every fucking year just about, Resident Evils, a whole bunch of random new IPs, etc. N64 had a handful of great games, but Playstation just kept putting out brand new stuff every month.

 

[Jean Valjean]

Power meant nothing, it's always about the games. I remember anxiously waiting for a N64 and got one with Pilot Wings and Mario 64, but eventually got tired of both and there was nothing else really. My brother actually sold his N64 after beating Mario 64 and played on PS1 exclusively.

Edit:
Hmm, N64 was more powerful and cheaper than PSX...

Released an year after, by the time N64 relesead the PSX had the same price as Nintendo's machine, the PSX could do things the N64 couldn't bc of the cartridges, Sony then was not the Sony of today etc.

Iseewahtyoudidthere but no, it's not comparable to this gen;

 

[BD1]

Anecdotally, I remember N64 being much more popular in my neighborhood/school. I think that is because I was in the Nintendo "sweet spot" age group during 96/97/98. My favorite gaming memories are local multiplayer on N64. Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, WWF/WCW games, Mario Party, etc etc.

 

[dsmoke1986]

Symphony of the Night as well, I believe.

You are correct, October of 97 that came out...Plus, PS1 had all the sports games like Madden, NHL and the Sony basketball games, also RE games were exclusive to Playstation early on.

 

[A Black Falcon]

This must be with worldwide or americas numbers but I remember hearing that Snes and Gen were neck and neck in lifetime sales until Sega pulled the plug a year earlier than Nintendo did, a similar situation to the PSX having way higher LTD than N64 because of the lingering sales?

That is true, the SNES outsold the Genesis from 1995-1997 after Sega's mistakes sabotaged the Genesis in 1995 (the first signs of trouble were in 1994, such as the massive success of DKC, but 1995 is when it all fell apart.). However, before that Sega had done well, and in 1998, Majesco sold the Genesis 3. I've read that the Genesis 3 probably outsold the SNES that year, which was the last year with significant 4th gen TV console sales in the US.

Now, did Nintendo win overall anyway? Well... likely. But we can't be sure! Maybe they didn't. I mean, all we have is that ~23 million number, and that's for the Americas as a whole. How much of that was US-only? I don't think we know. Maybe someone should go back through old news reports to see if there's anything about US-specific SNES sales, but I haven't seen that if there is anything.

And as for the Americas as a whole, actually as I've said before there I actually think the evidence that Sega may have won the Americas overall pretty compelling. The SNES and Genesis were neck and neck in the US, but I don't know that Nintendo sold the numbers elsewhere in the Americas to match the several million Genesises TecToy sold in Brazil... I think the Genesis was over 20 million in the US alone, quite likely. Add in the rest of the Americas, and the numbers are quite likely above Nintendo's. But we don't have proof, the numbers just aren't there.

You are correct, October of 97 that came out...Plus, PS1 had all the sports games like Madden, NHL and the Sony basketball games, also RE games were exclusive to Playstation early on.

RE1 was also on Saturn and PC actually, and the first Madden game released for the N64 in 1997.

 

[dsmoke1986]

Anecdotally, I remember N64 being much more popular in my neighborhood/school. I think that is because I was in the Nintendo "sweet spot" age group during 96/97/98. My favorite gaming memories are local multiplayer on N64. Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, WWF/WCW games, Mario Party, etc etc.

N64 Multiplayer is the greatest of all time, Goldeneye, Kart and the wrestling games, aww man...The best!

 

[polyh3dron]

I was so starved for games with the N64 that I bought Lamborghini Challenge. LAMBORGHINI CHALLENGE.

So yeah after FF7 had been out for a while I finally broke down and got a PS1.

 

[LakeEarth]

Goldeneye was a 1997 release and sold better than almost every game on the Playstation, you know.

That's why I said 'some major games in there'. Why do people ignore what people say in a post just to get that 'hur hur got ya!' post in there? It's my biggest forum pet peeve.

That came out in August 1997. What came out after that in 97 that had any impact? Diddy Kong Racing, the awesome Quarterback Club football game, the first AKI WCW wrestling game (which was great, but not as good as its future interations), Tetrisphere, Extreme G... Great games, but not that mind blowing, and after winter 1997 the N64 was still missing vital genres. That, among other things, halted N64 launch hype down hard.

 

[Square2015]

Very nice graph. The N64 did quite solidly up until sometime in 2000, certainly... the reason why overall in the generation in the Americas it was 66/33 PS1/N64 was because of how the PS1 sold for many years longer (the N64 faded out in 2000-2002, the PS1 in 2000-2005...). That built up a lot of base to push its margin of victory well above where it had been during the core of the generation.

Yes.

Also, just look at that Saturn graph. Right when FF7 released and Bernie Stolar said "The Saturn is not our future" at E3 1997, the line hits bottom and stays there except for a miniscule blip at December 1997. Thanks, Bernie, and Sega for getting into that state in the first place. It was a somewhat competitive system in 1995-1996, as those solid Dec. 1996 sales show, but it bottomed out early thanks to Sega being stupid (and giving up), mostly.

Actually Saturn was pretty dead even in '95-'96. It only surged X'mas '97 b/c of a three game giveaway promo launched by SoA.

I will post the rest of the graph, (Dreamcast included); no figures being given here just a graph (playing it safe).

(On an unrelated note, it'd be interesting to know for sure whether the SNES or Genesis sold more in the US, and the SNES or Genesis/MD more in the Americas as a whole. We legitimately do not know the answer to either one of those questions.)

Exactly! I've been searching for the answer to this for so long, we need to know, hell we don't really know who won the 16-bit war in the US [sales to customers-wise] still to this day, and yes there are conflicting reports on which sold more Stateside: N64 or SNES...

 

[TreasureHunterG]

The SNES and Genesis were neck and neck in the US, but I don't know that Nintendo sold the numbers elsewhere in the Americas to match the several million Genesises TecToy sold in Brazil.

As a brazilian myself, I can safely say SNES outsold Genesis here. Nintendo made a partnership with a company named Playtronic, a joint venture between Gradiente and Estrela, and brought the SNES here thanks to this deal. Although TecToy did great with Genesis (Mega Drive as it's known here), especially at Genesis's earliest years, Playtronic made SNES more popular. Estrela went bankrupt and Gradiente, later, became the only official publisher for Nintendo products in Brazil until 2002.

I don't know the official numbers for Playtronic/Gradiente's SNES in Brazil, but I'm certainly it sold more than TecToy's Genesis.

SNES was huge here because it had better soccer games. International Superstar Soccer blew away anything Genesis ever made for the genre. Genesis had, somewhat the upper hand in the soccer genre before ISS because of FIFA, which was better than the SNES versions. Yet, Nintendo had Hudson's Formation Soccer and Jaleco's Goal even before FIFA. What made SNES later to blow away in popularity was the unofficial International Superstar Soccer mod featuring brazilian teams named Futebol Brasileiro 96.

Street Fighter II was a phenomenon around here and it sold a lot of SNES machines, no doubt. Mortal Kombat was also a phenomenon and when SNES's versions became clearly better after Nintendo allowed M-Rated titiles after the ESRB creation, most of Mortal Kombat fans went to play the SNES version.

I really, really doubt Genesis outsold SNES here unless I'm proved wrong.

 

[Jean Valjean]

As a brazilian myself, I can safely say SNES outsold Genesis here. Nintendo made a partnership with a company named Playtronic, a joint venture between Gradiente and Estrela, and brought the SNES here thanks to this deal. Although TecToy did great with Genesis (Mega Drive as it's known here), especially at Genesis's earliest years, Playtronic made SNES more popular. Estrela went bankrupt and Gradiente, later, became the only official publisher for Nintendo products in Brazil until 2002.

I don't know the official numbers for Playtronic/Gradiente's SNES in Brazil, but I'm certainly it sold more than TecToy's Genesis.

SNES was huge here because it had better soccer games. International Superstar Soccer blew away anything Genesis ever made for the genre. Genesis had, somewhat the upper hand in the soccer genre before ISS because of FIFA, which was better than the SNES versions. Yet, Nintendo had Hudson's Formation Soccer and Jaleco's Goal even before FIFA. What made SNES later to blow away in popularity was the unofficial International Superstar Soccer mod featuring brazilian teams named Futebol Brasileiro 96.

Street Fighter II was a phenomenon around here and it sold a lot of SNES machines, no doubt. Mortal Kombat was also a phenomenon and when SNES's versions became clearly better after Nintendo allowed M-Rated titiles after the ESRB creation, most of Mortal Kombat fans went to play the SNES version.

I really, really doubt Genesis outsold SNES here unless I'm proved wrong.

Tectoy still sells the Mega Drive here...

 

[Hazelhurst]

Better games came out on the PS1.

People noticed.

I preferred the N64 titles. Super Mario 64, Wave Rave 64, Golden Eye, Ocarina of Time!, 1080 Snowboarding (loved it), etc.

I still need to go back and play Conker's Bad Fur Day.

 

[Timedog]

The console war that generation in the US was won by Mortal Kombat + price (beating the Saturn), and FFVII (beating the N64).

Without those 3 advantages the Playstation 1 would have ended up in last place.

 

[Square2015]

The whole war crunched together/summarized:
Not to get off topic but for those interested in how DC fared compared to PSX/N64 (and the SAT):

Click to enlarge.

edit: update because image lost

 

[GloveSlap]

I preferred the N64 titles. Super Mario 64, Wave Rave 64, Golden Eye, Ocarina of Time!, 1080 Snowboarding (loved it), etc.

I still need to go back and play Conker's Bad Fur Day.

N64 had incredible highs, but the PS1 just churned out good game after good game. You could definitely make the case that the N64 had a better top 3 or top 5 games though.

N64 was so great for multiplayer. PS1 was what I played when nobody else was around. PS1 also had so many good RPGs while N64 was really bad in that regard.

 

[Square2015]

As a brazilian myself, I can safely say SNES outsold Genesis here. Nintendo made a partnership with a company named Playtronic, a joint venture between Gradiente and Estrela, and brought the SNES here thanks to this deal. Although TecToy did great with Genesis (Mega Drive as it's known here), especially at Genesis's earliest years, Playtronic made SNES more popular. Estrela went bankrupt and Gradiente, later, became the only official publisher for Nintendo products in Brazil until 2002.

I don't know the official numbers for Playtronic/Gradiente's SNES in Brazil, but I'm certainly it sold more than TecToy's Genesis.

SNES was huge here because it had better soccer games. International Superstar Soccer blew away anything Genesis ever made for the genre. Genesis had, somewhat the upper hand in the soccer genre before ISS because of FIFA, which was better than the SNES versions. Yet, Nintendo had Hudson's Formation Soccer and Jaleco's Goal even before FIFA. What made SNES later to blow away in popularity was the unofficial International Superstar Soccer mod featuring brazilian teams named Futebol Brasileiro 96.

Street Fighter II was a phenomenon around here and it sold a lot of SNES machines, no doubt. Mortal Kombat was also a phenomenon and when SNES's versions became clearly better after Nintendo allowed M-Rated titiles after the ESRB creation, most of Mortal Kombat fans went to play the SNES version.

I really, really doubt Genesis outsold SNES here unless I'm proved wrong.

So how about N64 compared to SNES in Brazil, which do you think sold more? We need to find out sales for both consoles for the rest of the Americas, outside the States.

 

[Gen X]

the N64 did not have a consistent slate of releases until the latter half of 1997; I lived through it and watched release dates like a hawk. By April people simply grew tired of 1 or 2 new games a month compared to the spate of games the PS One saw every month. By the end of 1997 the playstation also saw some extreme heavy hitters .

This. it was almost like.release dates didn't exist on the PSone. You could almost go into the store every week and there would be new titles on the shelf.

The first 6-12 months on the N64 were painful. I remember the drip feeding of Turok, Blast Corps and Shadows of the Empire but not much else. Last game I bought was Lylat Wars then I sold it. 3yrs later I bought another second hand with OOT and Goldeneye. Perfect Dark came out a short time after. Great times.

 

[seattle6418]

As a brazilian myself, I can safely say SNES outsold Genesis here. Nintendo made a partnership with a company named Playtronic, a joint venture between Gradiente and Estrela, and brought the SNES here thanks to this deal. Although TecToy did great with Genesis (Mega Drive as it's known here), especially at Genesis's earliest years, Playtronic made SNES more popular. Estrela went bankrupt and Gradiente, later, became the only official publisher for Nintendo products in Brazil until 2002.

I don't know the official numbers for Playtronic/Gradiente's SNES in Brazil, but I'm certainly it sold more than TecToy's Genesis.

SNES was huge here because it had better soccer games. International Superstar Soccer blew away anything Genesis ever made for the genre. Genesis had, somewhat the upper hand in the soccer genre before ISS because of FIFA, which was better than the SNES versions. Yet, Nintendo had Hudson's Formation Soccer and Jaleco's Goal even before FIFA. What made SNES later to blow away in popularity was the unofficial International Superstar Soccer mod featuring brazilian teams named Futebol Brasileiro 96.

Street Fighter II was a phenomenon around here and it sold a lot of SNES machines, no doubt. Mortal Kombat was also a phenomenon and when SNES's versions became clearly better after Nintendo allowed M-Rated titiles after the ESRB creation, most of Mortal Kombat fans went to play the SNES version.

I really, really doubt Genesis outsold SNES here unless I'm proved wrong.

All true. I'm also Brazilian and back in the day (i only got a Mega Drive in 1994) i was the weird kid for not having the SNES.

Die hard Fifa fan at the time, i hated ISSS but everyone was playing.

I was a Sonic fan and i chose the Mega Drive because of Super Monaco GPII, Fifa and Sonic, of course.

In 1997, when i finally upgraded and bought a Saturn to play the great arcade ports, i was called completely insane for buying a system nobody knew. Everyone was either on this "new Playstation thing" or with an N64.

I bought a Sega Saturn in november of 1997, yes no internet back in the day. I used to buy the american version of EGM, and even tough i read it, i was still betting that Sega as a good choice.

Once i saw Gran Turismo i slept with the enemy (Sony) and never looked back ever since.

It's funny because to me the glory days of the PS1 were 1998, 1999 and 2000, mostly the end of it's lifecycle.

 

[TreasureHunterG]

So how about N64 compared to SNES in Brazil, which do you think sold more? We need to find out sales for both consoles for the rest of the Americas, outside the States.

SNES sold more, certainly.

N64 had very expensive carts and wasn't acessible for the masses the way SNES was. Piracy was huge (still is) by that time and PSX's CD was far easier to pirate. Most of N64's owners sold their machine in exchange for a PSX. Yet, N64 did great because of Gradiente's strong advertising, Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007, International Superstar Soccer 64 and Ocarina of Time sold gangbusters, but the price tag for the games was a very limitating factor.

 

[samman6]

Sony utilized the brilliant strategy that Sega started, by hitting the nintendo kiddie angle, and pushing strong towards the college crowd. I remember Sony really cross marketing with extreme sport, which were also exploding in popularity.

 

[Square2015]

SNES sold more, certainly.

N64 had very expensive carts and wasn't acessible for the masses the way SNES was. Piracy was huge (still is) by that time and PSX's CD was far easier to pirate. Most of N64's owners sold their machine in exchange for a PSX. Yet, N64 did great because of Gradiente's strong advertising, Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007, International Superstar Soccer 64 and Ocarina of Time sold gangbusters, but the price tag for the games was a very limitating factor.

Alright thanks this lends to the idea that the extra 3m SNES shipped over N64 number (23.35m to 20.63m) is due to heavier sales outside the UNited States thus the N64 may have outsold SNES here, I have interesting graphs from NoA that look into this...

Also I remember back in the day NoA touting Canada as Nintendo territory over PSX (2000?) so we have to consider that too...did SNES win in Canada ?

 

[catmincer]

I remember here in NZ. We were always a Sega country. Nintendo was a non-entity here really. All the kids in my school had a Master System or a Mega Drive. But when the PS1 came out, it destroyed the Saturn. The N64 wasn't that popular either but man it had some awesome games, I loved playing Lylat wars, GoldenEye, Mario Party on it. I do have to say though the Xmas where I got my PS1 was the best ever. Star Gladiator, Destruction Derby 2, Tekken 2 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy = best Xmas ever.

 

[mentok15]

Does anyone know the sales numbers for Australia? During the 90's it seemed Nintendo dominated here.

 

[A Black Falcon]

As a brazilian myself, I can safely say SNES outsold Genesis here. Nintendo made a partnership with a company named Playtronic, a joint venture between Gradiente and Estrela, and brought the SNES here thanks to this deal. Although TecToy did great with Genesis (Mega Drive as it's known here), especially at Genesis's earliest years, Playtronic made SNES more popular. Estrela went bankrupt and Gradiente, later, became the only official publisher for Nintendo products in Brazil until 2002.

I don't know the official numbers for Playtronic/Gradiente's SNES in Brazil, but I'm certainly it sold more than TecToy's Genesis.

SNES was huge here because it had better soccer games. International Superstar Soccer blew away anything Genesis ever made for the genre. Genesis had, somewhat the upper hand in the soccer genre before ISS because of FIFA, which was better than the SNES versions. Yet, Nintendo had Hudson's Formation Soccer and Jaleco's Goal even before FIFA. What made SNES later to blow away in popularity was the unofficial International Superstar Soccer mod featuring brazilian teams named Futebol Brasileiro 96.

Street Fighter II was a phenomenon around here and it sold a lot of SNES machines, no doubt. Mortal Kombat was also a phenomenon and when SNES's versions became clearly better after Nintendo allowed M-Rated titiles after the ESRB creation, most of Mortal Kombat fans went to play the SNES version.

I really, really doubt Genesis outsold SNES here unless I'm proved wrong.

That's very interesting, I'd always heard people say that the Genesis sold more in Brazil. I know I've heard that Genesis sold a couple million there. Hadn't hard specific SNES sales, though, so there's nothing solid to compare it to, unless you know of something from there. TecToy stold Genesses into the 2000s, though, and actually were still releasing new games up until the early 2000s. You have to factor in the extremely long lifecycle too, I very much doubt that the SNES lasted there as long... but sure, it's possible the SNES sold better. That would make it more likely that Nintendo actually outsold Sega in the Americas, though even with that it'd still be possible for Sega to have won, particularly if they actually managed to win (sale-wise) in the US despite everyone having decided sometime in later 1995 that Nintendo had. That is entirely possible, with how close things were.

 

[lordchompy]

Man, those $60 N64 carts are probably what did it.

 

[Poimandres]

Does anyone know the sales numbers for Australia? During the 90's it seemed Nintendo dominated here.

I'm interested in this as well.

Pretty sure the PS1 outdid the N64 here, but the N64 was popular. SNES vs Mega Drive was pretty even split, if my school yard experiences are any indication.

One of the reasons I wasn't super fussed on the N64 was because I was already playing stuff like C&C and Quake over lan (thanks dad!) so the multiplayer aspect didn't impress me too much.

 

[gogojira]

Man, it was rough being an N64 gamer. I remember being in middle school and nobody but me had the damn thing, lol. The two to three games a month that released were mostly bad unless it was an actually Nintendo release.

Still loved the system though because of some of the masterpieces Nintendo put out. It did mark my first venture into multiplatform gaming though because I simply couldn't resist that PSX.

 

[Gen X]

Does anyone know the sales numbers for Australia? During the 90's it seemed Nintendo dominated here.

I don't know numbers but I believe that there were more Playstations sold in NZ per capita than any other country in the world. There was something Sony was mentioning along this lines.

 

[Jean Valjean]

That's very interesting, I'd always heard people say that the Genesis sold more in Brazil. I know I've heard that Genesis sold a couple million there. Hadn't hard specific SNES sales, though, so there's nothing solid to compare it to, unless you know of something from there. TecToy stold Genesses into the 2000s, though, and actually were still releasing new games up until the early 2000s. You have to factor in the extremely long lifecycle too, I very much doubt that the SNES lasted there as long... but sure, it's possible the SNES sold better. That would make it more likely that Nintendo actually outsold Sega in the Americas, though even with that it'd still be possible for Sega to have won, particularly if they actually managed to win (sale-wise) in the US despite everyone having decided sometime in later 1995 that Nintendo had. That is entirely possible, with how close things were.

You still can buy a Mega Drive here, but now it's a portable device and doesn't accept cartridges:

http://www.casaevideo.com.br/busca/...0-Jogos-Tectoy.html?WT.ac=2784&WT.mv_ev=click

For "only" R$ 149,99 (approx. US$ 70).

 

[D.Lo]

That's very interesting, I'd always heard people say that the Genesis sold more in Brazil. I know I've heard that Genesis sold a couple million there. Hadn't hard specific SNES sales, though, so there's nothing solid to compare it to, unless you know of something from there. TecToy stold Genesses into the 2000s, though, and actually were still releasing new games up until the early 2000s. You have to factor in the extremely long lifecycle too, I very much doubt that the SNES lasted there as long... but sure, it's possible the SNES sold better. That would make it more likely that Nintendo actually outsold Sega in the Americas, though even with that it'd still be possible for Sega to have won, particularly if they actually managed to win (sale-wise) in the US despite everyone having decided sometime in later 1995 that Nintendo had. That is entirely possible, with how close things were.

Yeah do you know anything about this? I'd never even heard of 'licenced' SNES consoles.

The whole war crunched together/summarized:
Not to get off topic but for those interested in how DC fared compared to PSX/N64 (and the SAT):

Click to enlarge.

Is this just hardware sales?

 

[nubbe]

FFVII was the first dudebro JRPG, I still remember the "hysteria" around it
Excellent marketing

 

[baphomet]

Don't forget N64 games costing double and triple that of nearly all PS1 games didn't help. Going with carts was a terrible decision, but them being the greedy, inflated ego company they were at the time, didn't think it would make a difference.

 

[Aquamarine]

Don't forget N64 games costing double and triple that of nearly all PS1 games didn't help. Going with carts was a terrible decision, but them being the greedy, inflated ego company they were at the time, didn't think it would make a difference.

This is untrue. Check my post about PS1 + N64 manufacturing / royalty comparisons.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=66242171&postcount=118

 

[littlebirdtoldme]

both saturn and psone where better systems imho.

If i look at my life, n64 is about the only system i regret buying. Especially considering the purchasing power i had back then being a teenager.

I might as well have rented it and played those 4 great games.

 

[Aquamarine]

(On an unrelated note, it'd be interesting to know for sure whether the SNES or Genesis sold more in the US, and the SNES or Genesis/MD more in the Americas as a whole. We legitimately do not know the answer to either one of those questions.)

Exactly! I've been searching for the answer to this for so long, we need to know, hell we don't really know who won the 16-bit war in the US [sales to customers-wise] still to this day, and yes there are conflicting reports on which sold more Stateside: N64 or SNES...

There's a good reason why---given the inherent margin of error in old, ~1992-era sellthrough data, it's EXTREMELY hard to determine which 16-bit console actually won in the USA.

The Genesis / SNES were just too close sales-wise.


According to the sell-through numbers I have (1990-2000):

1) SNES > Genesis in Japan by a significant margin

2) SNES > Genesis in Europe, but only barely (Sega dominated in certain countries)

3) SNES ? Genesis in the USA....the sales are too close to definitively consider one console "better" outside of the margin of error