Date: August 14th, 2025 6:19 PM
Author: Upper Middle Class Dad in quarter zip golf pullove
3. Japanese developers deprioritized the N64.
Square, Enix, Capcom, Konami, and others had mostly gone PlayStation-only by this point. That’s why the 1999 N64 calendar looks heavy on Nintendo, Rare, and a few smaller Western studios, but light on Japanese output compared to the mid-90s.
4. The transition to next-gen was already happening.
By late 1998, Nintendo had publicly acknowledged work on the Dolphin (GameCube), so many internal and external teams pivoted. This slowed the pipeline for N64 titles, since the console was already being treated as a lame-duck system.
5. Fewer sports/annualized games compared to PS1.
EA and other big sports publishers had largely pulled back from the N64. Without yearly sports games to pad the release list, the gaps looked even bigger.
If you look at the release numbers:
NA had ~30 N64 games in 1999
PS1 had over 200
That ratio really tells the story — most of the industry had already moved on, and Nintendo’s tight control + cartridge costs made it impossible to keep a big flow of new releases.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5762283&forum_id=2most#49185746)