Poland started official gaming way later due to comunism. We didn't have NES or SNES, there were NES knock offs though, like very popular Pegasus. Game Boy and GBA were popular, but not as Nintendo Game Boys, just every kid had a Game Boy. That's the main reason for no nostalgia factor for Nintendo, and imo a big reason why Nintendo is non existant in our market, people see the current Nintendo offering and see it's shit. Well, no official Nintendo of Poland, Stadt Bauer (or something) doing lousy job as a Nintendo distributor (there is a new distribution company now I think), and overall the fact that Nintendo doesn't give a shit about our country, doesn't help either. Btw. the phrase "Nintendo of Poland" is a running joke among Polish gaming journalists 
The first PlayStation was still a pretty exotic piece of hardware, hard to come by, and I imagine extremely expensive. I recall my brother bringing one from France in like 1997 as a gift from his father. That was the shit :D I know of only one friend who also had a PlayStation 1 Slim, but way later.
PlayStation 2 launched here along with the European launch, I remember it being 3000PLN (around 900$ not counting inflation, for today) in the Sony Store in Warsaw. So yeah it was expensive. But it also sparked the console gaming in Poland. Mainly due to being easily pirated and eventually coming down in price. It was very popular.
Xbox had some shelf space, I don't recall seeing GameCube at all.
PSP was way more popular than DS.
Now 7th gen, Poland is finally in UE, so Wild West free market economy is leashed a bit. Consoles have normal prices (but retailers fuck us on exchange rates even today). PlayStation is domination, PS2 is still selling gangbusters, but X360 launches here for a good price and is easy to play pirated games on, PS3 on the other hand is expensive and jailbreak is introduced way later (and is still more hussle). That makes X360 really cut into PlayStations marketshare.
Fast forward, cause it takes too long. We are a PC-centric, I would say a relatively small market still, with a rampant piracy up until lately, when things are improving, we even have social campaings for anti-piracy (although targeted at art and music) but when there was that anti-piracy act worked on in UE, there were demonstrations and fucking riots against it country-wide of course everything in the name of freedom in the internet...so yeah there are still a shit ton of people who don't want to pay for their entertainment.
PlayStation is still synonymous with console among casuals and older people. Console gaming is becoming more and more mainstream, mainly thanks to Sony, who popularised it during the PS2 days, and are now pushing big marketing campaigns for PS3 and PS4 in TV, cinemas, billboards etc. As well as getting our popular domestic actors and celebrities (big names here) to do dubbing in Sony exclusives, while other first party publishers don't usually do dubbing at all. That makes PlayStation the biggest force in console market, especially among gamers, but X360 gained a lot of the market pie, is still selling well, but from what I see mainly to parents with little kids in shops, that buy Kinect and a Disney game. Microsoft acknowlegded that, and this holiday we had a big TV marketing campaign, focused only on Kinect.
But Microsoft apparently thinks that Poland isn't important enough and they didn't launch the Xbone here within the Tier 1 countries. Meanwhile PS4 has, and is selling like hotcakes. Surprisingly (I'm genuinely surprised) it's sold out in offcial retailers in Warsaw everywhere, as well as in Saturns and Media Markts country-wide, so I assume, we could safely say it's sold out in Poland overall. The lower price, which is still a big differenciator here and headstart, will no doubt help PS4 regain what it lost during the 7th gen. I'm not expecting a domination like in Spain, but 4:1-5:1 I'm sure is not out of question.
Ohh and one last thing to once again show how non existant is Nintendo here SCEPoland CEO, or other higher up, can't remember now, said that PSVita after it's first month, outsold 3DS's LTD in Poland, and that's why I love my country :D
The only tracker here I think is GFK Polonia, I will try to get some numbers regarding marketshare, size of the market, most popular publishers, and some sales numbers.
So it is happening...PS4 preorder.
Greatness Awaits!
