PS3 would do 120-140M in sales, Xbox would have been under 40M and MS would have left the market before trying X1.

Start of this gen several games also had crossbuy for little more.

The lack of the Blu-ray drive makes the extent of success murky. Ditching the cell processor would have virtually no drawbacks. I'd say 100 million would be a lock in this situation. 125 million wouldn't be pie-in-the-sky either.

I find it almost impossible that making PS3 200 cheaper for the whole gen (which would mean it could have been 149 by the end of the life) would just increase 20% the sales. For me it would certainly do over 120M, X360 wouldn't have had any wind. It would be more dominant than PS4 is since X1 was able to do well enough in USA and UK due to X360 building a good fanbase (that didn't really exist by the time of original Xbox).

Hmm, well you make a good point, but I still think it might have been more than 1 or 2 mil. Part of the reason it kept selling could also be that it kept getting tons of games for a few years after the PS3 came out, but a stronger start for the PS3 (and not using Cell) could have meant that developers transitioned over to that quicker.

There are some things I feel people aren't willing to consider. First, there were people that purchased the PS3 as a relatively cheap (for the time) Blu-Ray player. My girlfriends parents actually did this. They purchased 2 PS3's (one for her and one for the living room), but she was the only one that used it for gaming. Second, I think everyone assumes here that the PS3 without the cell would be just as powerful as the 360, but what people forget is that the 360's GPU was much more powerful than the PS3's, and that the PS3 offset this by using the Cell processor. It's entirely possible that, like the PS2 vs the Xbox, the 360 would be the best hardware.

Then there are other factors. At the launch of the PS3 there was a shortage of Blu-Ray drive materials, but this obviously wouldn't happen if they would have taken that out. Also, they cut costs on the PS3 later models by reducing backwards compatibility, but they may not have had to do this if they didn't have the Cell or Blu-Ray. Which could have impacted PS2 sales a bit, driving the hardware more towards the middle (e.g. PS2 at 130M, PS3 at 100M). Also, the 360's CPU was based around research from IBM surrounding the Cell processor, and is actually modified from that original model, so it's also possible that the 360 would have had a worse CPU in the final product.

So, this is what I ultimately predict. A 20M gain on the PS3, a 15-20M loss on the 360. A 20M loss on PS2 sales, though Wii sales stay the same. However, this also goes towards the future. Less 360 presence in America and Europe means Microsoft tries harder with the Xbox One. Hardware with that console is much more powerful due to a lack of arrogance, and no DRM fiasco. This leads to slightly more sales for the Xbox One, though PS4 still ultimately surpasses it.

PS1 and PS2 were weaker than the competition and that didn't affect a single iota on the sales of both. So if PS3 because of Cell removal ended up being slightly weaker than X360 that wouldn't really impact the sales negatively, while 200 USD less for PS3 would certainly made sales go up a lot. The Multimedia discount on sales for PS2 and PS3 should stop already, look at the tie ratio it is similar to X360 and PS4 so piracy, DVD or BD Player were very minimal distortions on the sales total.

The PS1 and PS2 had a huge benefit with the medium that they were using. The Nintendo 64 didn't perform well because third parties did not want to use the medium that they provided, and game prices were extraneous. The PS2 also started with a great medium, DVD's. Nintendo tried to compete with their mini-disks but, unfortunately, there hold on the market was already reduced and third parties weren't in support of their products as much (mini-disks also held around half the data as a DVD). Meanwhile, Microsoft was an entirely new contender in the market, and had to work very hard to receive the support that Sony received as a baseline. Of course, it helped that the PS2 played DVD movies out of the box where the Xbox had to have a separately purchased dongle and remote. 

Obviously, power isn't everything, but one reason that people purchased the 360 in comparison to the PS3 was it's better performance in games like Call of Duty. In fact, that's a typical mention up and down this thread. Basically, what I'm saying, is just that the Cell wouldn't necessarily mean that there would be better quality ports. All it means is that there would be easier ports in the beginning of it's life-cycle. 

"The multimedia discount on sales for PS2 and PS3 should stop already"

Why? A good DVD player back in 2000 cost about as much as a PS2, and the PS2 did a whole lot more. Sony advertised this feature-set as well. The first Blu-Ray player cost $1000 and released in June of 2006...just five months before the PS3 launched at $500-600. To deny the idea that some people purchased these consoles based on their multimedia capabilities is ridiculous. It wasn't the only reason to buy those consoles, but for some it was a big reason. Also, I'm not talking about piracy at all. I'm just talking about hardware purchases. 

So the general consensus seems to be that Cell/Blu Ray were a mistake, and that the system would've been better off without them?

Well I can only speak for myself, but.. 2005-2006 was the era I was looking to branch out from just Nintendo (and partly Sega but they had gone under) and I was truly split, on the fence between the 360 and PS3 at the time. I can pretty safely say that if the PS3 had launched for the same price or cheaper than the 360, I likely would have gone in that direction, and may still have been a Nintendo-Sony gamer today, rather than a Nintendo-MS one.

I even remember watching that epic Resistance vid in early 2006 over and over and hyping myself up for my first Sony console, but the company's rather poor E3 2006 performance and "599USD" for the premium unit pretty much squelched that notion and I shifted to 360 soon after. I mean, there was also Rare (who I was still a big fan of at the time) and Gears looked cool, but I'm not sure that would have been enough if Sony have just launched with a competitive pricepoint.

I definitely think this is somewhat what played out on a larger scale, and the steep pricepoint is a big part of the reason PS3 only barely beat 360 and was outsold by Wii.