Sony didn't have a clue when they first kicked off the PS1 brand. They had their horrendous "Polygon Man" add campaign and a bunch of games like Warhawk and Twisted Metal that were decent but weren't really endearing themselves with the public. People were more than happy to wait for the N64 (Nintendo even had the ad saying that it was worth waiting for "if you want the best"). Initially, it seemed like the one year lead that Nintendo gave Sony and Sega didn't mean a thing. But then Nintendo's delays in getting good games to market, the expensive nature of cartridges, and the fact that third parties were flocking to the PS1 made Sony the place to be when it came to quality gaming.
^^This was Sony's first PS1 mascot. The weight of the PS1's success was on his non existent shoulders!
The PS1 was far from a hardware powerhouse. Sega burned its fans time and time again, turning people against the Saturn before it had even launched. Nintendo was overconfident, thinking that people would still rely on them and their reputation, and released a system with an outdated medium (cartridges) and high prices despite innovations like the Rumble Pak and Analog Stick. Sony just sat back as third parties decided that "they weren't going to take it anymore" and released mega-hit after mega-hit on the PS1. As the saying goes, "Pride comes before the fall." Nintendo was too proud.
I owned well over 100 PS1 games. I remember listing all of the games that Sony had made that I owned. If memory serves me, all I had from Sony was Crash Bandicoot 3, Omega Boost, Wild Arms (I think that was from Sony), Battle Arena Toshinden (again, not quite sure if Sony made it), and Gran Turismo. Third parties made the PS1 king of the mountain.
-In my opinion.
