I bought PS3 mainly for the blu ray so...

If it had no blu-ray, it would have been much cheaper and I think it's safe to say that it would be in 2nd place in the console wars, but... It wouldn't be better, so I prefer it with blu-ray.
360 is starting to show it's age now, and one of them is the dvd 9 format. It will hurt the 360 a lot in sales and games in a few years

2nd Place... but I prefer it with BD.

I'd still own one if the online was still free.

2nd place. The cheaper price, and a possible earlier release date can help a LOT!.

It would have sold better at a cheaper price without Blu ray. But that doesn't mean it would have been better. The PS3 is a huge investment and would probably last twice as long as the xbox 360. Probably the next xbox will have the same features the ps3 has right now. Sony is known for its quality. And I guess many people out there just don't like quality and go for the cheaper price and awful hardware. Anyways the future is bright for the PS3. Blu ray i starting to get more popular. I just started buying blu-ray 2 month ago. I currently own 10 blu rays. I have a feeling that PS3 will payoff in the end. And the people who did buy it definitely made a good purchase.

Sony, overall would have been worse off, probably by 3-5 years after the PS3 if we didnt have blu-ray b/c that is the time that successful projects take to pay off, in this case the blu-ray effort.

-Sony will get royalties from BD when the 720 comes out if it will use Blu-ray
-Sony will get royalties from the wiiHD if it uses Blu-ray

-Sony will benefit from the influx of new tv technologies like OLED, once they come in.
-Blu-ray will enable Sony's 3-d effort to be successful, b/c you will need a lot more storage for that kind of graphics

-Sony's movie business will sell more because it has BD, the margins on these higher end products are a lot higher, so everybody likes selling them from retailers to studios
-Sony will sell more HDTVs because it has prompted a higher standard for movie and videogame graphics

Any questions?

I'd say yes. The PS3 would have been much cheaper and wouldn't have been delayed. If the PS3 could have came out in 2005 with a $399 price tag, instead of in 2006 with a $599 tag then it would be first IMO.