The ps3 is just a massive phail as a gaming platform period, doesnt matter when it was released, the result would be the same.

I love how people speculate how far away a release of a game is when they really have no idea. "Oh Killzone 2 is ATLEAST another year away."

YOu need to add in "I wish" to those statements fanboys. If you dont know, then dont state your opinions as factual support. If it is factual, then lets see a source.

I have speculated that many times Sony should have used their current lead with the PS2 and delayed the PS3 by a year or two and made the technology cheaper and perhaps even more powerful so that the different between the 360 and the PS3 was gigantic.

This is the way to disrupt the market... bring out a console in the middle of the generation of the other two.

Continue main development on the PS2 with a few houses working on BIG PS3 launch software... have some massive titles available for PS3 launch and their sales would have been massive and there would have been heaps of reason for people to want to buy the console.

This would have worked for a few reasons I believe -

The Xbox 360 would look weak and out dated.

The PS2 if still supported could clearly have a few more years in it... especially with Wii success, if there were big titles being released constantly then they could still hold market leader position with that until PS3 came and they build it from there.

Instead they are crossing the platforms over and I think this works negatively for the new console (it starts slow) but by now the PS3 has such a bad rep that it just isn't ever going to be huge... it can't catch up - not even with it's massive massive titles.

I would have liked to have seen Sony take a risk like that.

 Exactly. Whether som efolks like it or not, the PS3 is very ambitious and not just designed as a gameing console. Sony has a very widerange plan......we have such a "have it now" society....i mean, we post and frequent this site to get ioi's numbers of sales which arent official just to quench our thirst (they are accurate for the most part but the point stands).

I mean, we live in a world where if someone speaks on videogames its here in a matter of minutes....we proclaim failure or success in single days based on first day sales, first week sales.......folks, we live in a bubble......take a gander at Europe.....the PS3 is taking off.....in Japan it seems the PS3 is finally respectable....with titles such as Disgaea, White Knight Story, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear, Last Remnent........the PS3 should stay respectable and only get better.....America has a TON of work to do....for the PS3, no doubt about it......but if this year, MGS, Killzone and GT deliver the future may be bright.

I firmly believe had the PS3 not come out until now BD would be useless as HD DVD would most likely have destroyed it and as others have said the kits would also have been delayed and perhaps even more exclusives lost........Sure, the PS3 isnt in a great position....bu compared to 6 months ago, the PS3 is looking tremendous in all territories. Granted, it was so abysmall that isnt saying much......the worst is clearly over.....the PS3 weathers the storm, now over the next 6 months we will see if it has enough to sail back home.

I think the Xbox360 actually came out way too soon. The original Xbox was only 4 years old when 360 launched. XB still had amazing programming potential. This is also evident in existing Next-Gen games that look only marginally better than their PS2/XB/GC counterparts.

The heavy hitters that are really going to shine are still months away, making that a full year that Next-Gen could have used to gear up rather than jump in too soon.

From a sales and marketing perspective, of course it was the right thing to do. People wanted new technology and went out in droves to buy it. Gamers got tired of looking at a wall of 600+ current games that all seemed so-so. They wanted the cutting edge of gaming even if it had only 15-20 games available.

A second opinion tells me that game developers who can't afford a blockbuster budget for these high end machines develop games with previous-gen models and structure, then add a few splashy next-gen effects and styles to spruce it up -- but it's still just a previous-gen game with pretty makeup on that could have been done on PS2/XB/GC.

It won't just make it back, it'll make it back with tales of a brand new gaming era unlike any other with a host of gaming treasures for its fans.

Good things come to those who wait.

N64 in 1998 ...
Gamecube/XBox in 2003 ...

There really is no "comming back" from becomming the trailing console. The NES, SNES, Gameboy, Playstation, PS2, Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS all demonstrate the standard pattern of getting the lead early, using that lead to build (massive) thrid party support, and leveraging that third party support to build their dominant market position. Right now Nintendo is pushing publishers to give the Wii (at least) equal resources to the XBox 360/PS3 which will translate into dramatically more Wii games being produced than PS3/XBox 360 games; and Microsoft is pushing publishers to release every PS3 game on the XBox 360.

Both Microsoft and Nintendo are in a position to effectively block any comeback the PS3 could attempt ...

If they delayed a year and launched at $600 again, then history would repeat itself. If they delayed it a year and launched with the current price scheme they would be doing a ton better. If Nintendo has taught the video game world one thing it is that a handful of the best games ever made will not win a console war. If their franchises couldn't save a console, I don't think any really can. Third parties simply won't stick around long enough to make it happen.

I suspect that we have stumbled upon the entry point for the hardcore gamer. The mass market price is clearly around the $200 mark, but the hardcore seem to have an upper limit as well. $400 is starting to look very much like the sweet spot to get the hardcore to start snapping up the consoles. With a cheaper launch you would not have all the negatice hype and stigma that haunts the PS3 to this day. I don't think it would be rivaling the Wii, but I firmly believe it would be beating the 360 in weekly sales if it had started at $400.

It would have benefitted them to wait until they had more units for launch. They likely would also have avoided some bad press if they had waited. However, HD-DVD would have almost certainly won that battle if they hadn't launched when they did.

I think the biggest stigma surrounding every single console launch is not having enough units.  I remember when the Japanese Dreamcast launched in 1998 with a paltry 140,000 units.  They had enough demand to sell 350,000+ on the first day.  So the rest go home empty handed, and the supply is still dry weeks later so they abandon their desire to even pick up the system.

X360, same thing.  You couldn't buy one last year to save your life because they were so sold out immediately after launch.

And then the PS3.  People were being mugged and shot during the launch!!

Nintendo should have seen this Wii demand coming for the holidays and ramped up supply a long time ago.  October was seeing weekly sales of 150,000 yet they could have been selling 250,000 easily.

Apple saw the same kind of demand with their iPhone, but have been able to keep the supply up steadily.  No sellout nightmare on launch weekend.  Just hundreds of thousands of sales!!