Looks like everyone is treating it like a rhetorical question too, lol.

While I'll admit it's not completely an apples to apples comparison, in light of the many responses on this thread I understand what you're doing here and wholely support it.

Best lot of new IP's this gen. Thank you Sony for the PS3!

I agree with Kynes on this the question is not about "your" gamer perspective. Also keep in mind that you are not "we" :) Obivously I'm not either, so you should let everyone speak for their own.

Back OT, I'm voting no for 3 reasons:

1) Financial side. 
2) I'm playing a lot online and the overall online experience with Xbox Live was more appealing/fun to me than the Playstation Network (no debate please, this my personal oppinion anyways). 
3) Maybe related to the first one, but the fact that Sony spent so many money on the Cell architecture to finally come out with a console as powerfull as the 360. This is failure on itself.

Overall, I'm really disapointed with this console and it was a mistake to buy not one but two...
(I wanted another Bluray player for another room in the house and at this time I did not really played with the PS3 yet; so I thought it was a good move to buy a second one instead of a standalone player, big mistake)

The PS3, as a game console, is a success, for Gamers, because:

1. It’s sold by the millions and love by millions of gamers. And they have a very loyal following.

2. It help Sony win Blu-ray win the HD DVD Battle. (But the fight between HDDVD and Blu-ray opened a window so streaming could win, and Blu-ray aren’t the selling like DVD used to.)

3. It pushed the Xbox 360 to be a better gaming machine – by having add 1080P and HDMI. (Might have anyway, but I think it helped speed it up.)

However, Not as much of a success for Sony as they wanted. They did win the HD new format war ((Blu-ray) but at the lost of more people streaming), they didn’t dominate like the PS2 and like they thought/expected them to dominate. And they have lost Billions on the PS3.

I do think they have made plenty of money over all, just not as much as they wanted to. But I do remember Sony Pictures trying to say that ‘Forrest Gump’ the biggest movie of 1994 didn’t make any money as they didn’t want to pay the director his bonus. So I take Sony’s accounting numbers with a grain of salt.

So it’s a big WIN for Gamers and a rather good (but not as good as we were hopping) for Sony.

No, definitely not. It's a disaster for Sony - it lost them billions and will never recoup its cost. They lost a lot of market share and more importantly image/mind share.

Don't get me wrong, I love the console and it's getting closer and closer to being my #1 console of all time, but as a gamer you should always have an eye on the finances of the company. If you want them to continue to make awesome consoles and games, they need to make some money - it's a business after all. So even if you're not a shareholder and just want to play some games, if you enjoy what Sony offers and want to continue to do so, you should care if the bottom line is black or red.

The loss of mind share will probably be their biggest hurdle going into next gen and the problem is: It's not alone in their hands to fix it. They need the media to throw them a bone and that doesn't look likely. I mean, look at this gen - sure, Sony made some mistakes, but the crap they got for it from the media and gaming community was just ridiculous. Look at the Vita right now - it's out a few weeks in Japan and already we got people talking about it being discontinued and not even releasing in the west. Stuff like this is laughable if you're somewhat informed, but a lot of people aren't and get "unsure" about a product when they read/hear stuff like this - it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Nope considering I had aps1 and 2 and I dont think I.m buying aps3.

Compared to PS2, PS3 obviously wasn't worth it.

I was a much bigger fan of the PS2 myself and I know that I'm hardly the only one. My PS3 has been broken for about a year and I still haven't bothered to replace it, this never would have happened with the PS2.

Im a huge ps3 fan. But id say no... for the games they provided yesss. But they were laughed off the e3 2006 stage with a insanely priced console. They still managed to lose billions of dollars.. then right when everything started looking up for them they got hacked this year. That was a black eye forthem. So just because they have huge games. They went from selling 160 million units last gen to 60 this gen... and being third place at that.

As a product it's already almost a success, it will be in a few years, considering its whole life and how it resurrected from the initial deep troubles.

Strategically, it helped Blu Ray winning the format war and it resisted MS' attack also in the gaming world, keeping the PS brand alive and forcing Sony to strengthen its 1st party, that will be very useful also next gen. In addition, now that next gen approaches, PS brand is in a far better shape than during the worst troubles, early this gen, and its currently the strongest amongst home consoles, this should help a lot when PS4 launches.

Financially it's not, maybe it will become, but it will take some more years, not earlier than 2014, to recoup all the losses, and only with the help of SW sales, HW alone would take many more years and need very high sales. Currently, though, it's profiting: thanks also to the increased user base and SW sales, since it stopped losing money on HW, during Spring 2010, it became better for Sony to sell it as much and as long as it can.

When PS3 stopped losing money, it already sold around 50 million units, with losses initially in the hundreds $ per unit, decreasing in three years and a half to zero, on top of this losses, initial investments must be added, but profit per unit on HW in the second half of its life, with a low retail price, won't ever be as high as the loss per unit in the first year and will probably always be in the tens $, so HW sales alone would need to sell a lot more than another 100M, very, very unlikely, to recoup losses. Luckily for Sony, SW sales, with lots of 1st party games, to boot, and with the help of peripherals too, will make possible what for HW alone would be almost impossible. But not before 2014, and it's an optimistic estimate.