Thread is about what would have made the PS3 successful, not what would have made Sony more successful. 

They're selling PS3 at a faster rate than PS1 and are on track to surpassing it, so really its just the PS2 they have to live up to.

gota link where you got this info from??

PS2s launch price was 499 euros here in Europe. If PS3 released on this price+better marketting(ever seen the evil baby commercials and compared it with PS2 This is living and Kevin butler commercials? What the hell was Sony thinking back in 06-07?)

They could also made a better and faster OS and included a microphone in all SKUs catching the online gaming era.

Hardly any PS3 exclusive gets advertised properly, even GT5...

If Sony does this right with PS4 they could rule next gen. Not that PS3 is doing bad either, it probably can sell 100 million when its all said and done.

"What Could Have Sony Done Different To Make The PS3 As Successful As Its Predecessors?"

Answer: Nothing.

When the Playstation came out Sega dropped the ball with the Saturn and developers preferred CD over the N64's carts. This created what was essentially a one console market. All you needed was a Playstation and you were guaranteed more games than you could play in every genre. By the time Sega redeemed themselves with the Dreamcast the Playstation brand was so huge that gamers ignored the Dreamcast's excellent library and waited for the PS2 based on memories of the PSX and all the promises Sony made about the power of the PS2. Developers just moved from the PSX to the PS2 and it's user base grew to epic proportions even if it's capabilities could never lived up to Sony's promises.

But then Microsoft joined the party. They threw money at developers and even though the Xbox failed to toppled the PS2, it successfully did one thing. It split the market. While Nintendo continued to live off in Nintendo land like it always has and still does, the Xbox and PS2 exist as two sides of the same coin. Tomb Raider was on both, MGS was on both, and Microsoft published exclusives to counter Sony's, like Forza and Halo.

Then Microsoft hit the market with the first 7th gen console ensuring developers would support the only game in town. Xbox Live grew into it's own and online gaming went mainstream. Even if Sony hadn't priced themselves out of the market with the PS3, they still couldn't undo the loss of exclusive developers or the loss of mind-share.

Devs and Publishers can no longer release games on one system and expect to make enough money. They need their games on as many platforms as they can port to. And if both systems have great games, consumers will buy either one.

I guess if Sony released the PS3 a year before the Xbox 360 and at a reasonable price point it would have helped. But I doubt even if they did that the PS3 could have sold like the PS2 or PSX. The Xbox 360 has too many great games that people want to play.

Both systems are worth owning and therefore the market will remain split and I expect it to continue to be split through the next generation. That's a good thing in my opinion. If all three companies own equal portions of the market then they will fight over 1% market shares. We win because of competition and we won't have to worry about losing another like when Sega dropped hardware.

Losing 3rd party exclusivity is what did it for me (but i did end up buying one eventually after my two 360's bit the dust!)

No Blu Ray
No Cell
Better advertising
Cheaper
Increased failure rate

Nope, just most people have an opinion they'll share.

Saying what you believe they could have done with hindsight is easy but there was a lot of things that have gone against Sony this gen that their riskier loss leading model couldn't weather.  Business is a risk, Sony took a gamble and lost out on nearly every throw of the dice, hence the huge losses.  We can all review the aftermath and say what we thought we'd do differently though, that's not to say we'd have thought the same in 2005 as you just couldn't envision all thats happened. 

Lets face it, the 360 is practically a different console now than it was at launch, everything from the dashboard, feature list to the hardware itself has changed.  How could Sony plan a strategy to keep up with that development. 

In defence of the ps3, it's not exactly the same thing that came out of the traps no?

Also, we seem to get this topic every other month with the exact same answers, am I the only one who notices?

1. No CELL as people have said... should've launched in March 2006 like originally planned at one SKU of $399
2. Make the system easier to develop for
3. Keep exclusives... GTAIV and Assassin's Creed could have been at the minimum timed exclusive but Sony said NO to Take Two and Ubisoft respectively. Then Sony lost Devil May Cry, then Tekken, Final Fantasy, etc. etc.

They would've been huge system sellers. They kept MGS4 and look what MGS4 did, it made the PS3 somewhat respectable back when it was laughed at.

4. Stop delaying so many games too... it seems that every exclusive PS3 game has been delayed from Heavenly Sword to LittleBigPlanet to Gran Turismo to Metal Gear Solid 4. The games needed to come fast and hard like the PS2.

The Xbox launched in November 2001... so how did Sony respond? By having a ton of games released in 2001... Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry, Gran Turismo 3, Twisted Metal: Black, Jak and Daxter, Metal Gear Solid 2, Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto III... Sony came out of the gate with domination by the PS2 and showed no mercy to its opponents.

On the other hand with the PS3 Sony let all their third parties go to the 360 and even the franchises that are still with the PS3 exclusively were scattered throughout the generation instead of dominating out of the gate. They say "first impressions mean the most" and the PS3 had a VERY poor first impression.

It all came down to this:
- Price
- Release date
- Lack and loss of exclusives
- Lack of exclusive "killer app" (PS1 had Final Fantasy 7 while PS2 had GTAIII)

Sony had a chance to steal momentum from Microsoft (the Xbox 360 came out of the gate pretty poorly actually) but did not. E3 2006 Microsoft stole the momentum and then the game was on and Sony was lost.