Yup. He was VERY stubborn.
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Why did Nintendo stubbornly double-down on cartridges with the N64?
- Thread starter ZombiePlatypus
- Start date
Dreamwriter
Member
Because they wanted video games to go mainstream, and knew that Sony was the company that could make that happen. So they helped Sony out by sacrificing that generation by making games for their system cost developers far more to manufacture for far less storage.
Yea I remember seeing 59.99, 69.99, 79.99 on average for N64 games when they launched. Overall it was a bad idea.
Then they follow that up with mini discs for Gamecube...
POWERSPHERE
Member
Whatever it was, load times were a dream
XAMOEL_ART
Banned
If you can make or put 64GB on a small pendrive right now.
Imagine how much capacity can make an updated cartdridge. with the 64 or genesis physical size.
Imagine how much capacity can make an updated cartdridge. with the 64 or genesis physical size.
Theanine3D
Member
When I think about how annoying Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask would have been with long loading screens, I have a harder time seeing this move to stick to carts as a bad thing.
I know it lost them massive amount of third party support, including the most painful loss of all, SquareSoft. But because of carts, my entire N64 library still works, and in contrast, I only have less than a handful of PS1 discs that still work or aren't scratched to death.
I know it lost them massive amount of third party support, including the most painful loss of all, SquareSoft. But because of carts, my entire N64 library still works, and in contrast, I only have less than a handful of PS1 discs that still work or aren't scratched to death.
Cow Mengde
Banned
It's good to dream, but that would make the console cost even more.
While I prefer N64 to PS1 in general... how the hell did you scratch your PS1 games to death? None of my PS1 games are scratched at all after heavy use.
I thought at the time, the Playstation was to early with it's disc-based-sytem because of the horrendous loading times.
Shuggananas
Banned
loading times would have killed the pace of super mario 64 too
Someone talked about SNES CD, felt like it is a good time to show this off:
http://astamuse.com/ja/published/JP/No/1994075663
http://astamuse.com/ja/published/JP/No/1994089566
Why not just look at the actual unit?
digoutyoursoul
Member
I miss cartridges....sometimes 
……forgetit
Member
Ya know, sometimes beating your competition is more important than making a boat load of money, this was one of those times and Nintendo made the wrong choice.
D.Lo
Member
Lots of people who had the consoles when they were kids. Kids break things, so it's good to buy them things that are hard to break.
On N64 it was the sticks. My N64 controllers still play like new, but kids wrecked those sticks.
Also on point, carts seemed like heaven when my early model PS1 only played games sometimes if it was placed on its side or upside down, which could sometimes damage discs. I eventually bought another since they fixed this issue 3-4 years in. That was the original DRE/RROD. Street Fighter Alpha load times were also completely infuriating and had me waiting for the N64 fighting games (lol). I had to buy a Saturn basically.
In the end carts was a bad decision, if only because Japanese developers became obsessed with CDs and wanted games full of video and pre-rendered backgrounds. Remember Squaresoft going to Sony was primarily a creative decision because they wanted a game full of videos and to use pre-rendered bitmaps of the CGI models they were creating.
AppleSeason
Member
It's primary an economic reason, as most of Nintendo decisions.
They controlled the manufacturing of the cartridges for which third-parties paid some good money for.
Not just that but the lack of a CD subsystem make them save about $50.
A not so well known fact is that while total software sales on N64 were greatly diminished compared to SNES, the actual first-party sales (which have far better margins) were notably larger:
So the thing with producing a cheap to manufacture platform is much older than than Wii. interesting.
LuigiBlood
Member
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Because Nintendo is hardly ever with the times.
The second patent I linked offers a little look in the inside.
Oooh shit son, that image didn't display on my mobile! I'll have another look! Thanks
Edit, you need to bump the PlayStation SNES thread with this.
Suzushiiro
Banned
To be fair, blowing off third parties and making whatever the fuck they wanted had served them well enough for the past two generations. Why should they think Sega or Company Who Had Never Made A Console Before In their Life Entering The Market With A CD-Based Console #5 would be a major threat?
evilromero
Member
Their decision to use cartridges for the N64 has been well documented in several books, magazines and interviews. In fact, Nintendo Power themselves even had several articles and issues back in 1996 that outlined why they went with carts instead of CDs. But Game Over, The First Quarter and several of the gaming magazines at the time like EGM and NextGen published articles describing Nintendo's decision. It's not secret. Piracy, load times, control over manufacturing of carts for licensees, their recent falling out with Sony over a disc-based system and a few other internal development factors lead to that.
A quick Google search would give you plenty of resources to answer this question with more sources than you could ask for.
A quick Google search would give you plenty of resources to answer this question with more sources than you could ask for.
I must have lived in some alternate dimension of the UK in the 90s because from 1994 to 2000 or so, every single person I grew up with had Nintendo consoles and only one has a PS1. I did not know anyone with a Sega. I grew up playing SNES, Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye with my mates.
Literally everyone I've spoken to online seemed to have the opposite experience. It's bizarre.
LincolnSixVacano
Banned
Why are we suddenly comparing this to mechanical hard drives? I'm comparing it to Optical discs. I'm arguing flash drives are still faster than optical discs. Let's just look at the numbers.
Read Speeds:
Optical 7,800 kb/s
Flash Drive 16,000-25,000 kb/s
Mechanical HDD 150,000-250.000 kb/s
SSD 400,000-500,000 kb/s
This means any one of these carriers is better (read: faster) than Optical discs. Flash is slower than mechanical, of course, but it's still twice as fast as Optical.
openrob
Member
I always thought it was to control production, coming out of the era of the video game crash and Nintendo recovering by preventing unwanted games on the System by strict control.
Didn't Nintendo even go as far as making the 64 hard to develop for to ensure only dedicated developers would work on it?
To be fair the only restrictions on the Wii U are on Miiverse (strong censorship), the leap from friend codes was huge.
Didn't Nintendo even go as far as making the 64 hard to develop for to ensure only dedicated developers would work on it?
To be fair the only restrictions on the Wii U are on Miiverse (strong censorship), the leap from friend codes was huge.
PdotMichael
Banned
Modern consoles getting their data from the hard drive. Any possible differences in speed between BD or any form of flash drive don't matter anymore, meanwhile the BD is still king in space and price compared to any other solutions.
ReBurn
Gold Member
That's why BD is a good delivery vehicle for introducing games to the HDD, but the data transfer rates still make it the worst choice for delivering data at runtime.
MrCunningham
Member
Optical disc?
This is not an optical disc though. It actually uses magnetic film and works like an old school floppy disk. As a matter of fact, that is what it is. Just a higher density floppy disk.
The Nintendo 64DD disk could only hold about 64MB, which is about the size of the largest N64 cartridge (Resident Evil 2). It still would've been much cheaper to manufacture these than a cart like RE2, but as far as storage goes they can't be compare to a CD. The one advantage that these do have though is the ability to save right to the disk itself. The transfer rates were also faster than CD too resulting in better load times. Though they are still slower than carts. It really isn't that different from the Famicom Disk Drive in many ways. But unlike that one, Nintendo used their own propitiatory casing and format.
EDIT: You already covered this. But yeah, they are like Zip Drives.
Suzushiiro
Banned
Yeah, pretty much- flash memory only really becomes a viable option when you're dealing with handheld devices, where mechanical hard drives and optical media cease to be viable due to size/moving parts issues. Which is, of course, why Vita, 3DS, and (from what rumors imply) NX are going with them.
clevbrowns94
Member
I'm okay with Nintendo doing things different as long as it adds value to the console. And they have done things different with every console since the SNES. The Wii brought motion controls, and the Wii U brought off TV play and touch screen support. Sure, the Wii hit it out of the park, and the gamepad did not help sell Wii U consoles (granted, it was one of the system's many problems), but they both made for unique systems. Whereas the N64 with cartridges added only a few advantages, but killed third party support and didn't add much value. And the Gamecube with mini DVD's was even worse, ensuring that you couldn't play DVD movies on the system like PS2 and limited the storage space. The N64 and Gamecube storage mediums were just the company shooting itself in the foot for no good reason.
Load times were certainly the key feature for social gaming like Mario Kart, Smash Bros. and Mario Party. Waiting a minute or so between games would have killed the experience
Zombie James
Banned
This was it, iirc. Arguments about load times and durability - while valid - were just excuses.
SEGA first started getting third party support back in the 16 bit era primarily because they offered not to treat those publishers like beggars. EA in particular had an exclusivity deal with SEGA in spite of smaller market share because SEGA chose to treat them like a partner rather than gouge them at every opportunity like Nintendo did.
Blaming the choice of cartridges on loading times or piracy is naive - they're bullet point advantages, but the real reason was always money and control. Look up Tengen if you want to get an idea of how much third parties resented Nintendo for their draconian business practices - some of which being of questionable legality.
And CDs weren´t chosen for beeing ridiculously cheap and having a larger profit margin? And Sony didn´t have control over their medium?
PdotMichael
Banned
It doesn't matter. The extra costs aren't worth the little bit of extra higher transfer rate if the consoles have 500GB/1TB/or even larger hard drives.
Waylon Drums
Member
Being a kid at that time was tough.
"The Ultra 64 will be in your hands by Christmas of 1995!
...I mean, April of 1996!
...I mean the fall of 1996! For real this time!"
From the biographies that I read/watch, they (or Yamauchi specifically) are more paranoid and controlling rather than arrogant.Boss★Moogle;181612005 said:
Magical Sound Shower
Banned
The piracy argument is bunk; it was all licensing. The N64 was pirated super fast after its release. I remember that the first copiers were available by 1996
MrCunningham
Member
While this is true, Nintendo also had their monopoly on third party developers broken up by the FCC in North America during 1990-1991-ish. This really opened the flood gates for third parties to support more than one 16bit console on the market. At least in the western regions.
AcademicSaucer
Member
or Banjo Kazooie, or Smash Bros
There's a couple of things. First of all Nintendo's success was built on first party games and in particular Miyamoto. Of course Miyamoto being a hardcore game designer wanted to maximise the playing experience and hence wanted the fast loading times of carts. He also wasn't interested in things like FMV or streaming audio and preferred in game cutscenes and dynamic music that could change according to the game situation.
Nintendo also made a lot of profit selling cartridges to third parties and of course other business factors like less piracy, lower hardware costs and better hardware reliability also pushed them in the same direction. On the other hand you had multiple CD systems failing like the CDi, 3DS, Pippin and Sega CD. Even the Saturn was a failure and the first year of the PSX wasn't spectacular either so CDs clearly didn't mean automatic success.
Nintendo obviously didn't account for how many third parties would leave them, but they also didn't account for the fact that third parties would raise their game so much, nor did they take account of the gaming population aging or how Sony would target and market towards that audience so effectively.
Nintendo also made a lot of profit selling cartridges to third parties and of course other business factors like less piracy, lower hardware costs and better hardware reliability also pushed them in the same direction. On the other hand you had multiple CD systems failing like the CDi, 3DS, Pippin and Sega CD. Even the Saturn was a failure and the first year of the PSX wasn't spectacular either so CDs clearly didn't mean automatic success.
Nintendo obviously didn't account for how many third parties would leave them, but they also didn't account for the fact that third parties would raise their game so much, nor did they take account of the gaming population aging or how Sony would target and market towards that audience so effectively.
Theanine3D
Member
I take it you've never shared a home with a toddler.
Try living with a younger sibling in the house that thought it would be fun to insert CDs into the VHS slot of the TV. And that's just one example.
He tried shit with my N64 games too, but those still survived through all of it. Those things are practically indestructible.
PdotMichael
Banned
The N64 had also an incredible bad attach-rate because of the high retail price for games. So cartridges as anti-piracy measure failed quite hard.
Sectorseven
Member
There were copiers to things like zip disks, but I don't recall there ever being any straight up bootleg carts.
Razzorn34
Member
Yeah... I'll always remember this from KI arcade. The Ultra... N64 took so long that a subpar KI port went to SNES instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRDb5OKsPZk