I also wonder about the PS3 just being a BluRay Player/Media Server for some people. The only thing I think is that some of the PSN content might still be bought by these people, and if they ever get downloadable movies there might be hope for some sort of success. Time will tell.
Rabid Bunny
PS

People usually bring up the logic that the PS2 helped DVD adoption rate and I am sure it did but from my personal experience it wasn't as big as it was made out to be. Though the PS2 played DVD's it was rarely used for such at least in my experience. The number 1 place where it was most used if used was in college since everyone brought their consoles but at home most people just used their dvd players. Though the war seems to be almost over the price is still up there if you want to go with a ps3 at $399 though you can get players less than that they may not have all the features like 1080P etc. Currently I know three people with a PS3 and between them they have 2 movies. Basically blue-ray is nice to have for a PS3 but I don't think it will drive sales as much as people think.

It wasn't. At all. Another myth that is simply untrue. There were roughly 14 million DVD players sold in the US by the time the PS2 launched here.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/cemadvdsales.html 

I do think that Blu-Ray winning the war has changed things somewhat. As Just_Ben said, it changed "from a burden for the PS3 to an Asset." However, I do think that overall this will affect sales minimally.

Like I've said before, it's Sony's in-house development teams that will eventually push the ps3 passed the 360. Sony has a hefty amount of 1st/2nd party developers that are finally abandoning the ps2 and working on the ps3.

The link isn't working for me, though I firmly believe that DVD was in fact established before the PS2 came out. I remember getting a $150 DVD player about the time the PS2 was new, or perhaps before it, which made it so the PS2's influence wasn't massive.

It did, however, still exist. I've known a lot of people that have owned a PS2 and not a DVD player. While the people you associate with may own DVD players just for movie watching they do not represent the spectrum of PS2 users.