Many people stop playing games after a certain age? Do u have any sort of data to back that up? Like somebody says, "hey its my 22nd birthday, I guess it's time to give up gaming and become an adult!!!"

No, that's not how it works, if gaming is something u really enjoy and is ur hobby, u don't just give it up because u hit some unspecified age. Now do some people quit gaming because they have more responsibilities like work or family and no longer have time or money to continue gaming as a hobby? Yes that's completely reasonable to expect.

Sega's strategy was working very well in the early 90s, that has nothing to do with their downfall. The downfall came because they pissed off fans by releasing expensive, add-ons for Genesis that got very little support and by high launch price of Saturn. They also angered retailers who were left out of the early launch of Saturn. They also angered developers by making a difficult to program for console and doing the surprise early launch because these developers weren't able to capitalize on launch sales. These things made gamers, retailers and developers choose Playstation over Saturn and Sega started losing a ton of money by cutting the price of Saturn and selling it at a big loss.

Many of these things wouldn't have happened if Playstation never existed. When Sony revealed the Playstation specs in early 1994, Sega panicked and doubled the components to Saturn which made it more complex to program for and making it more expensive. The early surprise launch was also an attempt to give them a head start against Playstation. So if Playstation hadn't released, Saturn would have been easier to develop for, cheaper and wouldn't have a rushed early launch meaning they wouldn't have angered fans, retailers and developers nearly as much as they did.

I don't really know, maybe Sega would have survived, Nintendo would have a bigger install base, someone else would step in (maybe Microsoft) and the industry would be as healthy or more as it is now. It's hard to tell, obviously. I don't really like how the industry evolve throughout these years to an almost exclusive rated M entertainment. But to each his own. We can also say that maybe the gaming entertainment wouldn't even exist withouth Nintendo, but, that's impossible to know.

It would probably be moving faster to PC and tablet/phone gaming (there is tons of pressure for people to move their gaming habits there, in every single conversation about the whole platforms where gaming happen).

Now, the XB1 and Wii U with their weak sauce specs, they can't even hold a candle to a recent low end PC, the argument to keep playing on consoles would be even thinner than they are now (easy of interaction with the eco system, that's it, performance is just not up to par on these machines, some even argue the PS4 is not satisfactory... those two are just out of this conversation).

Also, Steam big picture mode makes living room PC gaming much more realistic and interesting, add software like XBMC and Retroarch to the mix, all made to be used with a controller and you made youself a pretty good argument for couch PC gaming...

I have a PS4 and an HTPC, my HTPC has reasonable specs and it basically performs similarly to the PS4, but it's a million times more flexible! Which one gets more use? Well, the HTPC can run web sites with video on them (we are cord cutters) that the PS4 can't... however we like the PS4 netflix app.

So for now it's close to 50/50 depending on what gets released... but if Sony does not release good exclusives it will eventually turn, if anything just because I can upgrade the HTPC in a few years with a better CPU/video card and be done with it, I keep my steam library and everything works, only better, no "remasters" or such BS.

Also, many seem to forget that, altough Europe wasnt as  interested on consoles as the Americans and Japs, the interest on games was already established

They used the Spectrums, Amigas, etc to play

And also the portables consoles such as GameBoy and GameGear where relevant

So you don't think that those games' success on the playstation console had something to do with more sequels being released? What's pretty wild is that some people seem to think if playstation never came into being then all of the IP's that were released first on a playstation console would of magically still be released on any console and the gaming market would be the same today regardless if sony entered the market or not.

I haven't taken any jabs at any console or tried to downplay what any console did. I'm gonna just give some quick examples and not list everything that I could find on what would of changed without xbox or Nintendo. It's safe to say if MS didn't enter the console market with the xbox, FPS would not be what they are today and no where near the quality of games of in that genre. How many FPS games were created because the genre's popularity exploded? It's safe to say that Final Fantasy wouldn't of existed without nintendo. 

It's feasible for at least some of those game series to not existed or became what they are now without a playstation console to find success on. That's all I'm really trying to say. 

FPS would have still been popular without Xbox. Look at Goldeneye on N64, it sold over 8 million with Perfect Dark selling over 3 million. And also look at Medal of Honor on PS2, it sold over 5 million on 2 separate occasions.

As for Final Fantasy, maybe or maybe not. Their really was no console market to speak of in Japan before Nintendo so it's hard to say, maybe if Nintendo never released entered the console market than Sega's SG-1000 would have taken off instead and Final Fantasy would have appeared on it.

It's not magic.  It's business.  If you're a software publisher, you publish on whatever console is available at the time (exclusivity agreements not withstanding).  Between 1996-1998, 3 different Tomb Raider games released on PC and sold over a million copies each.  Did their counterparts on PS sell more?  Certainly.  Would the Tomb Raider franchise have been still-born if there wasn't a PlayStation to release on?  I doubt it.  I love Suikoden, but not one of those titles passed a million in a sales (even on PS2's uber-userbase), so I don't see a reason why Konami wouldn't just release on whatever system was available/capable at the time.  The highest selling Shin Megami Tensei titles released outside of this millenium were on the Saturn and SNES, so I don't see how PlayStation saved/is responsible for this franchise's existence.  The fact that there were 6 previous Final Fantasy's, and that one of the most beloved in the franchise (even if not the highest selling) was on the SNES tells me that Square Soft would have done just fine continuing their flagship franchise elsewhere. 

In fact, since the 3rd party support that Sony was able to snag away from the Nintendo 64 was part of what made the original PlayStation so successful.  Imagine a Sega Saturn with the system sellers like Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Metal Gear Solid.  Segas fortunes could very well have turned out very differently, especially since their wouldn't have been a need to rush their launch.

Nintendo's market share decreased over time, not because the video game market itself was shrinking, but because of competition they themselves created (PlayStation).  I think it's presumptuous to assume that the entire industry would have collapsed if Sony hadn't entered the market.  That's all I'm saying.

I don't think so, but a healthy competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo is better for the industry.

Yes, its because Sony was expanding the console industry at a rapid rate and what they were doing with consoles why Microsoft had to step in. Sony wouldn't partner with them. The size of the popularity of gaming multiplied by the time the PS2 dropped.

Yes, Sony expanded the consoles business at a rapid rate in Europe, not so much in America/Japan.

America

Atari 2600-23 million

NES-33 million

SNES/Genesis-45 million

PS1/N64-60 million

PS2/GC/XB-80 million

And a few million to each of those generations due to smaller competitors.

Japan

NES/SG1000-20 million

SNES/Genesis/PC Engine-25 million

PS1/N64/Saturn-30 million

PS2/GC/DC-30 million

As u can see America & Japan console markets were already big and growing at a consistent rate, no reason to assume such a thing wouldn't have continued without Sony.