10 Worst Mistakes Ever Made By Video Game Companies

9. The N64 Sticking With Cartridges

Wii u fail
Nintendo/Listal

The N64 was not an outright failure by any means. Even though it was comfortably outsold by the PS1, it remained a competitive machine, and featured a games roster that was among the greatest of all time.

As we all know from the last entry on this list, Nintendo had long been flirting with the optical disc format for its home consoles, but perhaps the failure of the SNES-CD gave them cold feet about the idea. The N64 ended up being the last games console to stick with the cartridge format, and as a former N64 owner who remembers having to pay £50 for games while my buddies were getting 'Platinum' PS1 classics for a mere £20, I can say that life was tough.

Sure, there were almost no loading times and games could be saved directly to the cart, but the format had a much lower capacity than CDs, causing certain developers (Final Fantasy VII makers Square, among others) to decide to work with the rival PlayStation instead.

There was a kind of nostalgic novelty to the N64 carts, but as a strategic decision it was a bit of a boo-boo.

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Gamer, Researcher of strange things. I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.