I was just answering Op's hypothetical question of a $400 blu ray ps3 in 2005 which if sony had made, would have probably been about as powerful as the wii.

I think sony should have not supported blu-ray with a console until the tech became cheaper. Multiple dvds isn't that big of an issue. Sony should have launched the ps3 $200 cheaper without blu ray. 

btw i am always here lol

good scenario.  I believe Sony should have advertised more how cheap their bluray player was compared to others on the market and especially considering it could play all their amazing exclusives.  I mean maybe replace the crying baby with something about having the cheapest bluray player on the market and you'd have had a more winning strategy.

In my mind, the only way Sony could release the PS3 that early and at that price would be to sacrifice something: the horsepower, the Blue Ray, internal memory, and even basic backwards compatibility would have to be considered for removal. And I'm sorry, but I can't see the PS3 beating the 360 without these features. The PS3 did as well as it did in the early days thanks to being the cheapest Blue Ray player around and being backwards compatible, and being powerful allowed it to get many of the same games the 360 did. Quite frankly, this incarnation of the PS3 strikes me as being essentially a Wii with giant discs. It would be a very interesting generation, but not one I think Sony would win.

The irony of these threads is that they ignore something truly fundamental. Competition doesn't take place in any kind of vacuum. Microsoft would have responded to that type of strategy, and Nintendo would have probably made different choices. The reason Microsoft is ahead of Sony right now is that they are more responsive to the market. It boils down to better decision making.

Sony won two previous generations, because they understood the market in a way that Nintendo did not. Despite what some people say. Sony produced two consoles that were superior to their rival, but that superiority was very specific. They were the kind of advantages that carry the day. In their first console they made disc formats work for gaming, and it is to their credit that they made it work. Others had tried and failed. It created a huge financial incentive for third party studios. Who could produce their products with a fraction of the overhead they suffered under Nintendo. It meant they could make more money, and take fewer risks. So they flocked to Sony's console, and where the games go the gamer isn't far behind.

In Sony's second generation once Nintendo had caught up with them in the format philosophy. Sony simply upped their game by turning their next console into a dual purpose device. Nintendo could only play games, but Sony could play both games and movies. Once again Sony found one particular technical advantage to exploit. Which let them win that generation handily.

By the time Sony got to its third generation. It had a strategy that worked, and that strategy came from their corporate mindset. They would just fashion a new technical hardware advantage, and guess what this is exactly what you got in the PS3. They tossed in a new high definition movie technology, incorporated the internet, and tossed it on top of a decent game console. The difference being that they didn't understand the market in the same way that Microsoft and Nintendo now did. They themselves didn't understand the market.

Everyone acts as if Sony had some kind of magical aura that turned everything it touched into gold. They just looked at the market, and tossed in a piece of hardware that gave them a real edge. That the competition couldn't match by just playing the game head to head, and this generation neither Nintendo or Microsoft obliged. We all know what Nintendo did, but Microsoft already had a fundamental edge.

The current market isn't about hardware as perverse as that may sound. Just incorporating some new core component isn't going to win over consumers. We are in the age of services, and that is something Microsoft understands, and would understand no matter what kind of hardware Sony came out with. Sony's methodology just doesn't work quite as well as Microsoft's methodology works in the current climate.

The supreme irony is that Microsoft would have won regardless. It is just a matter of the amount of effort that they may have had to put out. If Sony gave them a tougher fight up front. Microsoft would have just probably poured more of its resources into becoming a media hub a year or two sooner. As it played out Microsoft was able to coast for most of the generation maximizing its profits. Had that not been a option Microsoft might have over compensated. Making things that much worse for Sony.

In the end it doesn't matter how it happened. What matters is that it would have happened anyway. Sony didn't really understand the market better then their rivals, and that is all that would have mattered in the end. I don't see any way that Sony would have actually won this generation. That would have required a whole change in its mindset. Which is the companies problem on all fronts. It is like saying that tomorrow Microsoft will get into making candy bars, because they know that there is no immediate future in software.

The online features would have also been unrecoverably crap given the fact that Sony wouldn't have had a year to look at Xbox Live on the 360 whilst designing the PS3. I would say personally it would have been an advantage for Microsoft. Had Sony gone with a multicore version of their PS2 architecture developers would have slit their wrists. Essentially we would at this point be talking about how Microsoft can clean sweep the game console market after having locked up pretty much any gamer who cared about online.

Uh? This is an oddly specific thread. I'm not going to bother saying what I think sales would have been because if you're talking about technical changes to the systems...it changes everything.

I don't think things would have changed that drastically. The ps3 may have sold more, but not nearly as much as you say.

If the ps3 was really that much less powerful than the 360 it would also have a huge effect of 3rd party developers as well. Maybe some developers would have just stayed just with 360 because they knew the ps3 couldn't handle X game. Or like you mentioned, some 3rd party games like gta4 would have sold better on ps3. Maybe developers like Quantic Dream would have made Heavy Rain exclusive to the 360 instead 0_o

If MS was in 3rd place they would have definitely been more aggressive on pricing and exclusives.

then sony would be alot poorer than what they are now

The 360 would have won the generation and Sony and Nintendo fans would have taken the place of the sobbing Sega fans. People would tattoo Nintendo/Sony 4 life on their legs and talk about the good ol' days.