EricBall's Tech Projects

Maybe this would be useful for homebrewing?

 

https://github.com/DragonMinded/libdragon

Sony sold more PS1's because they had a much bigger, much better software library. The reasons you listed all contributed to that, but the end user only cared about the final result: what games do I want to play? The PS1 was the first modern console I owned - I never even considered the N64. If anything, the N64's later rollout should have helped by allowing them to pitch it as a newer more "advanced" console. But the titles just weren't there. The PS1 also had multiple "killer apps" over its considerable lifespan. The N64 had... ??

 

PS1 games

 

N64 games

 

There's also this:

 

Maybe this would be useful for homebrewing?

 

https://github.com/DragonMinded/libdragon

 

The guy who created it also had the only info I could find on the N64 GPU (without digging into emulator source code / repositories).

Sony sold more PS1's because they had a much bigger, much better software library. The reasons you listed all contributed to that, but the end user only cared about the final result: what games do I want to play? The PS1 was the first modern console I owned - I never even considered the N64. If anything, the N64's later rollout should have helped by allowing them to pitch it as a newer more "advanced" console. But the titles just weren't there. The PS1 also had multiple "killer apps" over its considerable lifespan. The N64 had... ??

 

That's what I mean by "virtuous cycle" - consumers buy consoles based upon the games available for that console; developers develop games for a console based upon expected sales, which is strongly dependent upon the number of people who own the console.

 

For N64 "killer apps", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Selects#Nintendo_64for a list of games which sold over a million copies.

 

For me, Super Mario 64 was the (literal) system seller, but then I had to wait many months between games worth buying.

So the lateness (newness) of the N64 actually hurt it then, because developers were already lined up behind the PS1, and everyone knew it? Makes sense.

So the lateness (newness) of the N64 actually hurt it then, because developers were already lined up behind the PS1, and everyone knew it? Makes sense.

 

More that Sony recognized they needed third party developers to survive & succeed. So by the time the N64 hit the shelves in Japan the PS1 already had nearly 100 titles available (and certainly more announced), versus the three N64 launch titles.

 

Ben's analysis is basically the same as mine. (Although I do not believe it was possible for the N64 to execute code from the cartridge directly. Based on the docs I've found, I think everything had to be copied to RAM first (and decompressed for some games). )