In 1994, home computers were getting more much popular, thanks in large part to the Eternal September having already begun and the proliferation of other national dialup services. People were finding interesting things with these new-to-them (expensive!) computers offline because even though dial-up was a prime reason they bought a computer to begin with, it very slow and was often still metered.
And by 1994, approximately every new big-box desktop computer came equipped with a CD-ROM drive. IDE CD-ROMs became well-entrenched around that time (which reduced costs by eliminating competing proprietary buses), and CD-ROMs held what was still a seemingly monumental amount of data. So they often used CD-ROMs to do much of their offline stuff.
Things like the Saturn, Dreamcast, PSX, and CD-i certainly helped move a non-trivial share of CD-ROM media, but the total number of these (pricey!) games sold is probably dwarfed by the ridiculous number of cheap shovelware PC releases. (And most people weren't reading like PSX discs in a PC -- piracy was a thing, but it required hardware hacking to work smoothly and successfully burning game discs was sometimes problematic enough that my friends considered it a black art.)
By 1996, things were changing in the PC space. Unlimited dialup was becoming common. Even AOL went from metered to flat-rate all you-can-eat in that year, and downloading larger things became a lot less of an ordeal.
In 1994, home computers were getting more much popular, thanks in large part to the Eternal September having already begun and the proliferation of other national dialup services. People were finding interesting things with these new-to-them (expensive!) computers offline because even though dial-up was a prime reason they bought a computer to begin with, it very slow and was often still metered.
And by 1994, approximately every new big-box desktop computer came equipped with a CD-ROM drive. IDE CD-ROMs became well-entrenched around that time (which reduced costs by eliminating competing proprietary buses), and CD-ROMs held what was still a seemingly monumental amount of data. So they often used CD-ROMs to do much of their offline stuff.
Things like the Saturn, Dreamcast, PSX, and CD-i certainly helped move a non-trivial share of CD-ROM media, but the total number of these (pricey!) games sold is probably dwarfed by the ridiculous number of cheap shovelware PC releases. (And most people weren't reading like PSX discs in a PC -- piracy was a thing, but it required hardware hacking to work smoothly and successfully burning game discs was sometimes problematic enough that my friends considered it a black art.)
By 1996, things were changing in the PC space. Unlimited dialup was becoming common. Even AOL went from metered to flat-rate all you-can-eat in that year, and downloading larger things became a lot less of an ordeal.