Nintendo chose to sell the machine on the merits of its fast-loading cartridge system and the insignificant fact that it featured a 64-bit architecture - unfortunately for Nintendo, people were more impressed by high-capacity CD media, in-game movie sequences and pre-recorded soundtracks than fast loading and the size of the machine's pipeline. Although it was a much higher powered machine than Sony's Playstation or Sega's Saturn, the N64 always lagged behind in sales.
The N64 was released in mid-1996 as Nintendo's front-runner in the original next-gen console wars.
