The big problem with delaying it any further is that PS2 is going to take a while to die down, so if they released it a year from now, all that would have happened is that it would have just taken an extra year for that to happen. Good for the Sony brand, bad for early PS3 sales. Beyond that, there are also concerns that a bigger headstart would provide Microsoft with even more support, though I don't believe any headstart would be insurmountable in terms of sales.

 I agree.  Any longer and Nintendo and Microsoft would have gained a serious "mindshare" and that could be potentially dangerous and causes major sales loss.

Longer would have meant sure death.

What I think Sony should have done... Forget Blu Ray, make an updated PS2. Keep all the specs for the PS3 now, but not the Blu Ray and just use DVD. Companies could use multiple discs if they had to.

This would have allowed them to release earlier and for a cheaper price. Less money spend on R&D as well. They could have launched before MS got a year headstart at $300 per system.

They would have sold tons cause there was no Wii, noone cared about Nintendo (well I did, but 99% of gamers didnt), noone knew about the Wii. Sony has the brand name and a cheaper system than MS with more games...

But instead since Sony is trying to win a format war (which has nothing to do with their game division) they tried to use the PS3 to support their Blu Ray format. If it worked it would have been great for them, but it backfired.

They missed their launch date, MS got a huge headstart, they got a crappy price (even with losing money on it) and the Wii was an unexpected smash hit.

Its almost as if Sony went to an expert and asked "what can we do to $#%# up every day in every thing we do?" then followed that advise...

But a later launch and noone would even care anymore.

Sony had to bring their console out last year.  It was one of the few things that kept consumers and third parties from defecting en mass to the other systems.

Sure, the price has cost Sony a lot of momentum, but they'd be dead in the water and would never recover if they delayed the launch to 2007 worldwide.  Future games and price cuts may help significantly, though they will never have the lead they enjoyed with the PS1 and PS2 again.

As for Blu-ray, including this drive in the PS3 did not really cost Sony that much more in R&D.  Without the drives included in the system, there would be no high def. format war... there would only be HD DVD.  I think Sony should have found a compromise with Toshiba.  If that happened, PS3 sales would be somewhat better and we'd all be better off.

Oh well, it is what it is.