They marketed it at young adults with disposable income. Advertised in different places and made PlayStation a brand. Only Sony thought to advertise PlayStation in nightclubs, sponsoring events such as that. How long have they been sponsoring the Champions League now too?

They also introduced licensed soundtrack with much higher profile musicians which fitted in with the demographic they initially went after. Wipeout has a completely different atmosphere to F-Zero, and a big part of that was the soundtrack (it always seems to come up as the reason a lot of people have such fond memories of the original game).

I guess they just came in with a different view/perspective, and it just resonated well at the time.

I think it was Final Fantasy 7 in the rest of the world.

It wasn't cool, well at least for me. It was really popular here because it had Winning Eleven, a football videogame series. Most people bought one to play that here in Argentina. And Argentinians love their football xD.

It is indeed a good point....but as it stands WITHOUT SONY those 3rd parties would not have been what they are today.

That is something I do not get, NIN and SEGA were both around but somehow but those 3rd parties went with Sony and blew up.

Sony did a lot right they deserve the credit that they got. Let's not take anything away from them folks!

Gaming was always cool, but thanks to Sony(whether it be from 3rd party support or not) gaming EXPANDED 100 fold...

Sony gave third parties a lot of freedoms that Nintendo didn't.  Third parties had to be batshit crazy to put up with Nintendo's tyranical policies of the 80's and 90's but since Nintendo was so dominant, they didn't have much of a choice.  Sega wasn't really a viable option because they had screwed their fanbase time and time again with unsupported hardware.  Sony offered a lot of incentive and low dev costs.  The PS1 became the default home of the third party, espcecially when Nintendo went full retard and stuck with cartridges.

Sony simply penetrated Europe successfully that's one of the biggest reasons why gaming expanded
in terms of making gaming "cool" with adults i would go with MS>Sega>Sony>Nintendo

Final Fantasy VII is a good case of Sony understanding third parties need. Can you imagine what we would not experience if Final Fantasy VII was a N64 game? Perhaps reduced soundtrack, world less detailed (and more bland) and absence of FMVs (much praised at  the 90s). CD was Sony's right bet. They tried to repeat it again with blu-rays, but without the same success. 

Both good points and good posts...

MS-Dos made gaming cool!

I don't even have to imagine.  I'm a Nintendo fan and I remember reading about Final Fantasy VII in the pages of Nintendo Power before Square made the jump to Playstation.  It wasn't pretty.  Nintendo has always had the attitude (or arrogance) to design hardware based only on the types of experiences that they wanted to offer and then letting third parties figure it out for themselves.  Yeah, the N64 was perfect for Super Mario 64 but so many other genres (like fighting games) suffered as a result.  Many will agree that sticking to cartridges was their biggest fumble, though.

Sega might have stood a chance but they even screwed RETAILERS by releasing the Sega Saturn early without telling anyone.  I don't know what the big two were thinking when Sony entered the party.  I guess they figured they were up against another SNK, Panasonic, NEC, or Phillips. 

Nah, Sony's role in expanding the gaming market is greatly exaggerated. All that happened is that Nintendo's consoles had been on the market for 10 years at that point so 10 year olds that had enjoyed NES were now 20 and ready for a new system, while a new batch of 10 year olds were ready for their first. PS1 succeeded because it was the right system with the right games at the right time. Adults liked the modern disc-based look, and the great, fresh content that was available.

I do think that Sony added some mainstream cred to the industry, however, since Sony was a well-known non-gaming brand entering gaming.