It's very simpleand cain be summed down to thse main reasons: 1. Segas scary mind set of focusing on hardwaremore than software. Since the Genesis, they had this thing with trying to update or make an impressive hardware experience without focusing on software, and the difficulty or interest it had on developers. 32x?, CD? Saturn? Dreamcast? They were not thinking of developing in mind with those systems, they were thinking about hardware. 2. Setting the Dreamcast up for the internet was a tad inconvenient. 3. Lack of genre focus. they were focusing more on acion/arcade type games. Even in Japan, there wasn't really a focus on promoting, however, reasons 1 hit this to. 4.CDs messed up space issues, and all other consoles had more space. 5. The fact that it was easy to pirate games because of reason 4. 6. A lot of production costs went into the controller instead of the console or hardware. 7. Instead of spreading out game promoting, or trying to make equal budget games, they used panic tactics and though few games with bigger budgets would make up in software sales to help with further development. Things like Shenmue for instance. 8. The Ps2 had some effect, but it is not even 40% of the reason for the dreamcasts downfall, as software and console promoting where not really there at all and many didn't even know the system existed when it came out. (like the TG16, except the TG has longer life, and was released in more areas.) But it did help. 9. Sega not even trying to get exclusive deals or trying to expand its own developers or development. mostly for reason number 1. There you go.
The N64 had led to that fast fall of theire relevance and appeal until they had to resort to abandoning their pride and using a temporary fix that may not work again next gen. The N64 caused this decline for many reasons and led to the equally failed Gamecube. These 8 reasons are why the N64 led Nintendo toward their demise. 1. The 3D hype. The transfer of Nintendo star games, to 3D. This really caused a lot of things. For one, when popular series like Zelda are Mario, as obvious as some of their problems may be, when transfered to 3D were considered flawless, wonderful, and the like. yet pretty much denying anything wrong with them. This overhyping also went for other first party and third party games on all consoles, although not as much as the N64. What this did was actually make it so that the most popular games on the system were less in number with a large amount of the library being undiscovered. Including Nintenos own Ips. Also, as the console lived, this hype died off quick, and I mean quick into the GC's release. The appeal of these games just died off and that lack of appeal went into the GC as well. 2. Lack of genre variety. The N64 popularized very few genres. The above reason also caused it so that the hype would also revolve arond set games with so few exceptions they may as well not be exceptions. This made many other genres on the system, good or not, seem to be of lessor quality and ignored most of the time. Or they would have, in many cases, a quck kick, and then die off really fast. 3.Third Party developers.Nintendo again, for the 3rd time, though nothing would happen if hey treated thirdparties as second class. This bit them hard throughout the 5th gen, and became a real problem once the hype and appeal that they were giving their first party games (and a few third) wore off. This went into the gamecube era where they decided to tr being nice at the last second, but still bit them and barely any decided to focus on it. 4. Over confidence. Nintendo used and despite popular belief, believed CD's were not really of value at the time. They never really did leanr there lesson with the small GC discs either. Which also lacked space. 5. Fear of piracy, combined with their overconfidence also messed up what would work in the market and what would not. 6. Lack of quality control. A lot of games not fed off hype advertised, even by Nintendo themselves, were just sub par games that they choose randomly or had paid to be featured. 7. Only limiting attention to only few first party Ips. Some didn't even see any day light and some had maybe one game or where IN a game but never added on to or put them in a game 5th gen. 8. A lot of focus on the MP aspect of the console. While this was something to point out, they put too much hype in the MP part of the system. This led to many games having poor local MP or games that had no MP or limited MP would not get attention (Unless they were fueled by hype like games such as OoT.) These 8 reasons went onto the Gamecube, whch suffered more problems, and while there are other things the N64 did, these are the main 8.
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