I don't think delaying any longer was an option for Sony. From a simple hardware standpoint delaying may have saved money on unit costs but would have cost money on lost sales and interest costs. I don't see how they could have wrung more than $100 out of each system and the company would have been hard pressed not to use that $100 to reduce the profit loss on each system. True the hardware problems limited supply but its not like that limited supply wasn't enough to meet demand as it is. Even if Sony could have launched at $500 then, the 360 could be $300 and the Wii $200 each with install bases of around 15 million. Adding in the question of whether 3rd party devs would wait that long I don't see how that's an improvment.
The PS3's technical advantage, as I understand it, is limited to the Cell. It has the same amount of RAM but unlike the 360 its not unified. It's GPU is actually weaker due to memory and bus issues. The Cell is far more powerful and also far more difficult to use. It's hard enough programming for the 360's 3 SPE's, but 6? I imagine most 3rd party multiplatform games will look the same on the two since they will only use 3 of the PS3's SPE's to make porting easier. Which is all why I said on the "what Sony should have done different" thread that I always thought they should have scrapped the Cell and RSX when the problems began to mount and pull a Microsoft, just grab OTS parts, say a Core Duo 2 GHz CPU, X1650 graphics card with 128 MB of RAM, and 256 MB of system RAM, make some minor adjustments and put it out. It'd still be capable of 720p/1080i (though not 1080p which neither system really is anyways). The difference between the PS3 and 360 would have been the same as the PS2 amd Xbox. They could have launched on time in force world wide, with a low price, under $400, and rode the brand name and 3rd party support to victory despite inferior graphics again, for the 3rd time.
Another thing to consider, even if the PS3 is more powerful, with 2 years of devlopment under their belt software makers on the 360 would be making it look its best with every game. Since the 360 games look equal to, or in cases better, than the PS3 versions with only a 1 year head start how much worse would it have been with a 2 year head start? Since Sony and its fanboys think graphics are the reason d'etre of the PS3, who would have bought it with a $200 cheaper system having games that look better?
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