happydolphin hit the nail on the head with regards to his ps1 comments

sony's initial first party offerings were nothing short of PATHETIC.

If they didn't have a bottomless pit of money (therefore able to sweeten up 3rd party developers with huge swag bags) they would have crashed and burned at the first hurdle.

For me theres NEVER been a company so undeserving of where they are today with regards to their gaming department.

long live the Konami code

Im not too sure about your statement. PS3 launch system is extremely reliable, if you follow the instruction manual (6 inches of airflow around it). PS1 was too. PS2 had systemic drive problem but usually after thousands of hours, 2-3 years for a core gamer more then that for many. How could this equal: their launch systems weren't too reliable?

Regarding Sony I was mainly referring to the PS1/PS2 eras.  I agree with you that the PS3 was a step up in reliability.  While there were some problems there were far less than their previous systems.  I believe the launch PS1s had a decent amount of overheating issues (remember people flipping their PS1 upside down just for it to play, well that was me also before mine finally died).   PS2 mainly had drive problems which isn't as big of deal as overheating.  Sony improved their quality while Microsoft is the main culprit of releasing a heavily flawed system just to get it on the market (360).  The catch 22 usually happened later for PS1/PS2 owners while the 360 owners got their little surprise a lot quicker.

I'm not a huge Sony fan. There's just a lot of 3rd party stuff they get that I like...

I see, beside corrupted data on a memory card I never had any problem with the PS1, that being said, it didnt served as much as the PS2/PS3 did. My PS2 had disc drive error after about 3 years, that wasnt so great. My fat launch PS3 is a damn tank though, it serves multi-media purpose so it has literally runs dozen of thousands of hours. The fan still never go to its highest level. Its not enclose and its in vertical position though.

I've played games since the late 80's starting with commendor64 and Amiga 600 (I think) and finally got the NES in the early 90's - and I gotta say: I loved Sony when they first came out. I had a PS (and a PS2 later on) and loved it! Nowadays I mostly play Wii or PC, but would love to play some Uncharted - which seems really sweet. I'm just not sure 3 games varent Me to buy a whole new system....

Blaming Sony for Nintendo's and Sega's mistakes would be like blaming Microsoft and Nintendo for the (relative) failure of the PS3. Additionally, their game development has certainly contributed much to gaming, far more than Microsoft or Apple.

Even ignoring Nintendo and Sega (who's philosophy of consoles, I would much rather have seen victorious, and which was unfairly competed against with moneyhatting and loss-lead.) Sony's stated mission of taking over the living room, and disrupting PC gaming caused a migration of PC developers to consoles, which became even worse when MS entered to counter Sony.

Sony is the reason PC gaming isn't as great as it deserves to be, and that is unforgivable. Under Nintendo leadership, console and PC gaming were separate and both awesome. Under Sony, PC gaming is turning into a gaming ghetto and console gaming is trying to be hollywood. They ruined everything.

Sony never forced developers (except Guerilla Games) to dumb down and port their games, that was the decision of the publishers. Additionally, placing any blame on Sony for the effect Microsoft's Xbox has had on PC gaming is ludicrous.