Sony's main triumph was reaching consumers in Europe and emerging markets IMO. Both the SNES and Genesis sold about 8 million in Europe. The PS1 sold about 33 million. Sony made gaming into a true worldwide phenomenon.

How much of that increase in game consoles being purchased was fall out from the crumbling home computer market? (Amigas and Amstrads etc.) That'd be interesting to know for Europe.

Nintendo and to a lesser amount Sega had problems to get into the european market. Ghosts (and lawyers) of Atari, different languages, different market barriers and so on. Don't forget, back then it wasn't the european union, the countries had different currencies, different taxes, different customs duties. Sony already had established contacts into europe with their other products. That and marketing (the ads for champions league, football(soccer for you americans) is much more important here in europe) made the Playstation successful here and grew the market. I don't have numbers, I'm interested how much of the market for Playstation was in europe and how much in the US and Japan.

Yeah, the PS1 was the first console I owned when I was old enough to get my own job (well, that and the N64) and I bought over 100 games for it.  The only first party games I bought were Crash Bandicoot 3, Gran Turismo 1, Legend of the Dragoon, Grind Session, and Omega Boost.  I went back for other titles after I got my PSP in 2009.  It was EA, Capcom, Konami, Square, and other third party games that drew me in.

LOL, I remember the good old times playing Monkey Island, Descent and UFO. That were great games.

Actually the European Union in it's current form was established in 1993. It actually dates back to the 50s as the European Economic Community.

I think you're confusing the EU with the Euro, which is a currency some countries within the EU have adopted. Taxes are still different in countries that don't have the Euro. Though it is more straight forward than it used to be.

Could Saturn play music CDs?

FF7, Tomb Raider, Tekken, MGS, Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, Parappa, MediEvil, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill  and much more made PS1 cool. Sure some games were on other platforms but many times they were ports releasing later on and these franchises sold most on PS1 and were marketed as such.

MG before PS1? It wasnt MGS, MGS started with PS1.

FF? You really comparing the 3D FF7 with sprite based snes games? lol

CD roms before PS1? Who cares, those were addons and consoles based on cd roms all bombed horribly against the PS1 which sold more than 100 million units.

Its not hard to see why PS1 made gaming cool, granted Sega was kinda doing this with the Megadrive but PS1 really kicked off a new era, leaving the kiddy, 2D colorful snes era behind.

Yeah, the N64 and PS1 were my high school gaming machines, and I felt that the PS1 had more in depth single player experiences (Mario 64 and Zelda not withstanding), while the 64 was more of a party and Nintendo machine.  I sunk TONS of multiplayer hours after school on Guantlet, the N64 Wrestling Games, Ramapge, Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, Smash Bros, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart..... mean while the majority of my PS1 memories, Blood Omen, Resident Evil, Castlevania (Hell, everything besides pretty much Twisted Metal 2 and Tekken) were single player.

...I'm not sure what my point here was, I guess I'll say that I probably owned about 20 N64 games and double that for PS1, but that I had maybe 4 Sony first party games, while the majority of my 64 games were Nintendo games.  I think Nintendo games also had much more of an "arcadey" feel, something that isn't kiddy but can be seen as such.  Simpler in a way, I suppose.

It is partially this but there are three big reasons the market expanded outside of children:

1) It looked like a grown-up's console, and was marketed as one.  THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT!

2) It played CD's.  This allowed adults to justify it as more than just a toy.

3) It DID have more adult games.  MGS, GT (Shown as more of a simulator than a game), and a few others were not available anywhere else....