Alternate history: What if PS3 launched without Cell or Blu-Ray at $399?

[DonFerrari]

Doctor_MG said:

DonFerrari said:

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. 

Sure PS1, 2 and 3 had a good media solution that on the case of Nintendo competitor made several 3rd party go exclusive to them (besides Nintendo relationship being bad at the time). But the buy of the console for the use to hear CD or buy DVD and BD were minimal.

Haven't said no one bought PS2 or PS3 for those reasons, but that was a very minimal quantity that nowhere would really change the quantity of consoles sold.

curl-6 said:

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?

The Cell/Bluray themselves weren't mistake but what they brought, high cost and difficult to develop made a big negative impact to PS3.