Should N64 have been a CD System?

It also isn't clear as it uses company names and not product names which is an issue for MS and Sony since they do alot more than gaming. Besides, anyone can make a chart to support their argument if they want to.

 

I think that's basically what the M2 would've been if it'd been released: an N64 with a CD drive. Or maybe a slightly underpowered Dreamcast.

Actually, I'm kinda glad they used cartridges, for collecting purposes. It's a lot cooler to have a big box full of cartridges than a little case full of discs.

 

Noooo. All consoles should be solid state, and I don't think it'll be long before they are once again :>

 

Maybe it was for the best in the end that sega passed on the architecture that was used in the 64. Honestly though loading times could of been a pain. The system cost with a cd drive would of been $300 at least. I would imagine cause of advances it could of included a faster drive then what the saturn and psx had. Plus I mean with the cost of ram how much would of added to the cost if it would be 8mb? So when games used the expansion pak, was it used for a texture cache as well?

 

It's pretty safe to assume their profits would be a lot higher if it included other stuff besides gaming...

 

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/index.html
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/default.aspx

If there is one thing really bad about that graph is that the title isn't descriptive at all.

That graph show the cumulative operating income in US$* generated by Sony and MS division that include the gaming sector and Nintendo **( the entire company is based only on gaming ).

* being Nintendo and Sony japanese, it was likely used a historical exchange rate to convert the income from yen to US$.

** Keep in mind that Sony and Nintendo FY period don't match MS one.

So in the last few year MS EED division ( is still named that ? ) were profitable as you can see from the line going up.

As I said I agree that PS1 was more profitable than N64.
However you are understimating N64 profitability.

Despite being considered the most powerful console ( debatable I know ) it's profit margin were higher than PS1 and the higher cost in cartridge production were recouped by the higher MRP ( although cartridge were a pain in the ass if you had inventory issues ).


Also Nintendo own software sold great on N64 especially in North America.

Depend on your definition of "better" I suppose but I can guarantee you that original Xbox was a money pit.
That was ( one of ) the motive that caused MS to kill the system despite starting to gain notable marketshare in US.

 

Where did you get the image?

 

*click-click, grind-grind, whizz-whizz*

 

I like the Carts better, yeah you paid a lot for them. But really they were quality stuff. As a kid, the carts were fun to plug in. The system it's self was very well built. Can't say Nintendo's systems were not well built, same goes for the carts.

For some reason, N64 seemed the least favourite out of the group of people in my class at the time. All I heard was playstation. playstation. At this current moment, the PSone has killed it's self numours times, and has been repaired a lot. N64 is still going strong.

 

Obviously a cart-based system will last a hell of a lot longer than a CD-based one. There's no laser assembly that could break down.

 

You can get new CD assemblies. If needed you could probably even get new ones manufactured.

Sayin999, the expansion pack did not help the texture cache issue. That was an issue with the hardware responsible for rendering. I think the custom microcode by various developers might have gotten around this issue in clever ways but the release of microcode development tools was late in the N64's life and not all developers could make their own. The normal code was pretty poor from what I've heard. The expansion pak just adds an extra 4MB of RAM which helps for having more textures in memory as well as more everything else like level data, models, sounds, etc.

 

Sure ninty could've made a CD-based N64 without the long loading time by using a 4X drive combined with a big 16MB buffer that could load most of the stuff (music being played from the CD itself) but that would've made the N64 more expensive, specially for ninty itself which would have to subsidize it to remain competitive.

So basically they threw the cost to the consumer and developers.

Anyways, MSFT and sony right now are at an impasse: both spent tons of money on their respective console and haven't made it back yet, and while the HW has aged the fact is that nobody is willing to break the bank by releasing a true nextgen console.

In fact ninty just made them a HUGE favor by making the WiiU just slighlty (50%) more powerful than X360 and PS3.

Had it been 10 to 20 times more powerful like the Dreamcast was to the N64 and PSX MSFT and Sony would be scrambling to get new HW out right fucking now.

 

You sure about that?

 

No, instead you have a leaf-spring based cart slot that gets dirty, corrodes, and has to be desoldered from the PCB to replace. Yeah, that's MUCH better!

Ask any Saturn owner if they wished games came on cart rather than CD.

 

Obviously you didn't read my earlier post where I said CDs were better than carts...but cart-based systems do generally last longer than CD-based ones.

 

The Saturn connector is bad, but generally a cart interface will be a lot more sturdy and durable and will survive longer than an optical unit.

 

I always believed it should have. However with Nintendo's track record, it probably would not have taken very long for it to become hacked. Plus back then they were not very up to snuff on antipiracy in their systems. N64 was hacked relatively quickly but due to the fact it used cartridge it made it pretty expensive for V64+N64+cart kit. I priced it out back in the 1990s and it was roughly $550-$700 for a working set. Not many parents would jump at paying nigh up to a grand for a video game for their kids at the time. But they are always willing to fork out 50 bucks at a time on each game even still in this day and age.

Just my opinion that N64 should have had CD because that would have allowed them to compete with other CD based systems of the day plus allow developers a way to store games cheaply. You notice that Square did not release anything on N64 due to the fact that Nintendo f***ed them over on Chrono Trigger, a 32M game that quite generally costed more than SNES flagship titles that were at 24M-23M in size. Square and likely other companies did not like this stronghold the big N had on the game developers.

I think they could have done a lot more with the SNES and N64 if either of them had CD capability either in an add in or that the N64 actually should have come with an optical drive rather than an added on zip drive which was a total failure.

 

Other than needed to be cleaned often, I'll agree with that. It's clearly more of a pain to fix a bad cart slot than a bad optical head, but fortunately they don't need fixing as often.