the Wii and PS3 would have fighted over the casuals. M$ woud have won the generation because it would have virtually the entire "hardcore" market two itself. 

PS360 has sole over 130 million unites between them. Think about it.

Xbox 360 would probably still been a success with at least 40m sold. Its got Halo and way better marketing. PS3 would still hit when Sony is having bad times and Sony's marketing would suck. If it came with move then people would say they copied Nintendo.

I said it before and I'll say it again. PS3 having Bluray and requiring a HDD were huge mistakes.

I don't think a reasonably priced PS3 would have killed Xbox. But the 360 wouldn't have been as successful without Sony chasing away its fans.

Ok, now I am convinced this Turkish guy is a joke account. Well played, sir. Took me awhile to figure it out.

Perhaps.

We would've been expecting a PS4 launch this year, that's for sure.

well, if my grandma was a bus, she could honk...
but no, even with a cheap ps3 ms would still be in business (they could have sold the x360 for even less money) and outsell ps2? hmm, hard to guess.
but what is it still all about? an even weaker ps3 would have been so bad for sony-fans, perhaps resulting in a disaster like wii-games (technically).

I dunno about forcing Microsoft out of gaming, this gen they've been extremely competitive and agressive with there games, making sure Microsoft get's timed exclusives or exclusive games over Sony. Although the PS3 would probably be at Wii level sales now.

MS wouldnt drop price. If Sony would've sold the PS3 at $399 at launch their sales would've been way higher and the 360 would've never brought down the PS3's marketshare as much as it did. The Wii would've been unavoidable though.

Well yeah, because for one thing if it was sub-$399 machine at launch, that would have meant less complicated hardware (aka easier to program for than CELL) plus no Blu-Ray player (which was retailing for nearly $1000 for standalone players at the time).

It probably would have been released alongside the 360 in 2005 as well instead of being delayed a year to include Blu-Ray. Sony wouldn't have lost as much 3rd party support as they did early on, and M$ wouldn't have been able to get as many exclusive deals or convince as many 3rd parties to go multiplatform like Square.

Of course, no Blu Ray means no FFXIII in all it's native 1080p, lossless audio glory that Sony fans still fantasize over and blame M$ for ruining Square's would-be masterpiece, so either way, FFXIII would have still sucked lol.

one thing to add: sony would have never abandoned the cell - it was developed together with ibm and toshiba and all three put 400 million dollars in it - in 2005 they would *not* change the whole architecture to something different, because
1. this would have delayed the start of ps3 by a big amount
2. games developed with devkits would have been needed to be rewritten
3. the cell was a "performance wonder"
but who cares anyway? the customers are the winner of this whole thing.
the ps3 being number "1" wouldn't have made the games for ps3 anything better.