Did Sony Fail The Playstation 3...

[Icey7]

To simply answer the question I would say yes.
Sony's strategy with the PS3 was simply wrong IMO.

There are several key factors:

Time to market: I don't think Sony were late, it's just than Microsoft pulled out the stops (cut corners) to get a one year advantage.

Price: As with many others here I agree that the initial price point was too high - this in turn would lead people looking to upgrade to buy a 360 instead. Whilst I do think BluRay was the right choice, the card readers and 4 x USB were overkill.

Cell CPU: A very impressive CPU for raw performance but I don't believe that makes it a good CPU for a games console. Not only did this impact the price of the PS3 but also the many complaints on the difficulty of cross-compiling games and hence 3rd party support.

RAM: 256MB + 256MB appears to have been a bad decision. Either a single 512MB addressable by both GPU and CPU or since they were happy to over spec 512MB + 512MB would have been nice.

Backwards Compatibility: If cost effective then either have it from the start and make sure ALL territories get it! Or don't have it at all.