Sega had destroyed their reputation while Sony was the most admired electronics company out there.

Especially if they had been burned by Sega, the PlayStation from Sony seemed like buying the best product that would last. Parents would hear the Sony name and think quality and reliability. When people heard that Sony was coming out with a video game system, everyone would think that it would be the best just based on the brand. It can be hard to remember what a dominant force Sony was in consumer electronics. Everyone wanted anything with the Sony label on it. You even started to see older games for $25. By the time that the N64 came out, the PlayStation had a huge library of excellent games that were cheap. Not only that, PlayStation games were so much cheaper! At $50/game, it was just a ton more affordable than the $70 that N64 games were going for. While the N64 might have had more 3D capabilities, many of the games on the system didn't look as good and the 3D gameplay wasn't as compelling as the PlayStation's. Nintendo's N64 would be launching a year after the PlayStation. It decided to use quadrilaterals instead of triangles and was complex which makes it harder to use effectively. Sega had shown that it would abandon systems at the first hiccup - and try to get you to buy junk. Gamers don't want to buy a system you're going to abandon. Developers don't want to commit to a system you'll abandon. If you keep launching and abandoning products, you lost the trust and momentum. Video games can be an industry of momentum and trust. Sega launched 3 consoles in 2.5 years in North America.

Parents didn't want to hear that Sega was launching yet another system. Sega burnt too many fans when they launched the Sega CD and 32X just to abandon them nearly immediately. Sega was dead by the time the Saturn landed. The PlayStation hit a lot of the right buttons at the right time.

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