The PlayStation was technologically impressive, with its ability to splash over 300, 000 polygons on a television screen in a single second. (Nearly all videogame graphics are composed of polygons so "polygons persecond" is a rough and ready measure of a machine's power.) Perhaps more important, Sony carefully forged and nurtured good relationships with third-party software developers, ensuring a steady supply of great games for its system.
The limited number of polygons means that speeding up one of these systems to refresh the screen 60 times a second, as is needed to smoothly render fast-action scenes, requires cutting the number of polygonsper screen to the point where detail suffers.