Launching the PS3 with a price of $300 with full backwards compatibility would have provided a nice boost for the system because a fairly large portion of the 22 Million people who bought a PS2 since the PS3 launched would have bought a PS3 instead. Right now, there hasn't been a noteworthy exclusive PS2 game released in (over) 2 years, and hardware and software sales for the PS2 are rapidly disapearing, so the benefit of backwards compatiblity at this point is almost non-existent.
Now, at the rate things are going 120 Million consoles will have been bought by (probably) 80 Million households by the end of this year. Most of the gamers left to capture this generation will be the typical late-adopter, who probably won't own a HDTV and will not be very interested in a console over $150 to $200; and people who aren't typically interested in conventional games. I could be wrong but I suspect that the release of a $150 XBox 360 Arcade and a $250 Wii with Wii Fit and Wii Sports are both more attractive of packages to the majority of gamers that can still be caputred than a $300 PS3 ...
