In my opinion, Sony should have delayed the release of the PS3.  It is a vastly superior platform to anything else on the market, with the 360 coming closest.  And could quite easily be classed as a generation apart from the Wii and 360.

Sony still has a huge PS2 audience and an growing PSP audience coming in around 22m worldwide.

I reckon that they should have taken a step back after all the delays etc and made a very serious decision to delay the universal launch of the machine.  BluRay players will undoubtably reduce in price over the next 6-9 months getting to a more realistical pricing along with the costing of the hardware involved.

Yes Nintendo and MS would sell a load of units, but there are always people out there wanting to upgrade to better model and if it was introduced worldwide in November 2007 they would probably be able to reduce the price significantly due to lower BR prices and have a bigger catalogue of games.  This would have given them time to get a huge supply of them shipped as well and if it was introduced around the $450 (£269-£299 in the UK), it would have made a killing. 

They really couldn't wait any longer.

The headstart from the others would have been too much to overcome. Since it was already due in the Spring of 2006 another delay beyond Fall 2006 would have made people wonder if it was worth the wait.

While Europe & the other PAL regions would have been a little more forgiving this might have caused problems for their other markets.

Competition forced them to launch when they did.

John Lucas 

Releasing too late is what got them in to this mess. The last two Sony consoles came out a year before the competition. (Sega was too busy shooting themselves in the foot to count). The 360's biggest advantage has nothing to do with the console itself. It's the fact that it had a one year head start on a userbase and games.  If sony entered two years into things, with the 360 being that solidly entrenched and the Wii one year into it's complete dominance of all things living, they'd be in one hell of a bad place third party wise.

i think that a later launch would be more worse for sony.

maybe some people would wait longer for the ps3 but not all.

why should new xbox or wii owner buy a new console some months later ?

What I'm trying to say is that the PS3 should be classed as a console apart from the the 360 and Wii and a generation ahead.  Yes the Wii would have been out for 1 year, but the 360 would have been out for 2 years and the PS3 could have tapped into that.

You need to deliver a new machine either on time or skip it to a reasonably later date.  The PS3 should have been released early last year to make the difference...but because it comes out and has to compete with Nintendo's Wii which is less than half the price....this is what Nintendo do...look at the DS against the PSP...half price again....then build up the base with a solid bunch of games, but nothing spectacular...and people will buy into it...the more people who buy it makes more people want it.

If Sony couldn't release the PS3 worldwide in March 2006...then they should have delayed it unti; at least November 2007 or even later. 

Months ago I said that I believed that Sony was planning for a Q4 2007 release because they anticipated Microsoft and Nintendo producing basically updates on the Gamecube and XBox after 5 years and releasing them in Q4 2006; this would have put Sony in the position to release an afordable system and hype their competition to death. When Microsoft released the XBox 360 in Q4 of 2005 Sony was forced to release in 2006 because you can not give a company a 2 year head start in any market and expect to regain control. If Sony would have delayed the PS3 the XBox 360 would have sold 12 Million consoles in North America and 8 Million consoles in Europe and secured a ton of third party support before Sony got to market; when the PS3 was released it would be facing a $200 console with a massive library of games.

It wouldn't work the titles PS3 launched with wasn't that much more beutiful than xbox360. If the should wait untill 2007 the HD-DVD thing to xbox360 actuly could have been selling at least 500k or something giving HD-DVD an edge, making the format was extra hard.

It wasn't Wii:s price that killed the momentum for PS3, it was it own price that killed it 600 USD. More Wii isn't selling on price alone it is selling on a new experience.

PS3 is a whole generation ahead of the 360?  Is this guy for real?

 Yes I am for real...what makes you think otherwise?