1996, Nintendo 64

It was the year 1990 something and the internet is ablaze at rocking speeds of slowness all over a dial-up modem and Java running on those web sites. But it was also the era of more video game systems. Yes, another gaming system, this one named N64, well the nickname.

Nintendo 64

This was a cartridge driven gaming system, based on a 64-bit central processing unit. The cartridge was the primary format of the games.  With the launch of the N64 system, it featured 3 games

• Super Mario 64
• Pilot wings 64
• Saikyo Habu Shogi (For Japan)

This was part of the 5th generation and it competed with Play station and Sega Saturn

Games

Would you believe 338 games where released? (According to en.m.wikipedia.org), however, there were a few that were just sold in Japan. Super Mario 64 was the highest-selling game at 11 million games sold and it led to Golden EYE 007 and the evolution of the first-person shooter games. It was decided that the number of games would be restricted. This way the developers could focus on creating the best game inside of quantity.

Like the saying quality instead of quantity. 

Release

In Japan, it was released on June 23, 1996, and with a shipment of 300,000 units. That however sold out in the first day. When they did other runs on the building them, the units where all reserved ahead of time. When the N64 was released in the USA, it only had 2 games, the Super Mario 64 and Pilot Wings 64.

Could you think how bad it would have been if Nintendo did a release in Europe, USA, and Japan at the same time? It would have a nightmare for the production lines.

Sales

The N64 sold 350,000 of the 500,000 units with in the first 3 days. In the first four months in North America, it sold 500,000 units. They went for $199.99 apiece so that means that in the North America release it made $99,995,000 off of these game consoles. That is quite a bit of change. 

The sales increased by 157% in the year 1997. Over the course of the life span, the N64 sold a total of 32.93 million units.

My Opinion

In my opinion, this was a game-changer at the time. Now I didn’t have one, I was and still am not into video game playing, Yes, I will play a game, everyone, a while, I was the master at Techno Bowl. This started a trend which meant changes to how games where being played. 

Even if Nintendo’s net worth is somewhere between $20 billion and $80 Billion. It was half of what Sony’s is at. But still not too bad for a company that has been around for 140 years. My parents had one of these for the grandchildren to play on and they loved it.

Citation

Found information on Wikipedia.org