What if: Sony and Microsoft had both launched in 2005 at $399?

[platformmaster918]

gigantor21 said:

I honestly didn't think it would've made much difference. Whatever extra power came from the Cell was never tapped into in a way that made the PS3's hardware advantage consistently unambigious. And the most hype and excitement was for the Wii, which had broader appeal and still would've been much cheaper. Even if the PS3 managed to get ahead, I don't know if it would've been able to match the Wii.

A more interesting question to me would be like this:

Say Sony still released the PS3 at the same price, but abandoned the Cell and Blu-ray support in exchange for a system with similar hardware to the 360--but more raw CPU/GPU power and memory. What could've they have done with the system in that context? How much more powerful would it have been? If PS3 games looked and ran significantly better, how would it have affected sales?

interesting.  So I'm guessing in this scenario Sony is still taking a $200 loss on every system?  If so they could easily put a gb of RAM in it and get better multiplats along with get their exclusives out earlier since the devs wouldn't have to master the cell.  GT5 could've come out a year or 2 earlier so that would be huge.  I shutter to think what ND could've done with an easy system with more power after seeing Last of Us.