Damn, melodramatic much? I get it, you're sticking to the "putting blu-ray into the ps3 was the biggest mistake of the decade" line and not letting up.

Nobody knows how things would of played out if they chose not to put a BR drive in the ps3. What do know now is that the ps3 had a slow start relative to expections, but still hit 10 million well before the x360 did and that it has a very good chance to outsell it WW despite a year head start for the 360. 

Personally, I'm glad every PS3 owner has a BR drive and HDD. Sure it may have been a bit risky for Sony putting expensive BR drives in the PS3 when the format wasn't established, but it did have the backing of most of the industry and studios at the time. I use my PS3 for games mainly, but I do own a couple of BR movies and rent them when they are available. I honestly can't see how anyone can believe that 10 million BR players in PS3 as opposed to a few hundred thousand stand-alone BR and HD-DVD players didn't have a huge influence on the outcome of the format war.

If Sony hadn't added blu ray maybe it wouldn't have cost so much in the first place...
but iguess in a way they won

but they took a huge risk thats tru.

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2&reg1=Japan&cons2=PS2&reg2=Japan&cons3=PS3&reg3=Japan&weeks=70

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2&reg1=America&cons2=PS2&reg2=America&cons3=PS3&reg3=America&weeks=70

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2&reg1=Total+Other&cons2=PS2&reg2=Total+Other&cons3=PS3&reg3=Total+Other&weeks=70

As you can see, the only market which the PS3 is performing nearly as well as the PS2 at the same point in time is "the other" region; but as the graph makes perfectly clear this is mainly because of an offset in the time of year that the two systems launched. With how it has sold so far it is not unfair to suggest that the PS3 will likely sell to 1/2 (or less) of the audience of the PS2 which will impact the revenue Sony receives from licencing software.

Now, the main reason the PS3 is performing so much worse than the PS2 did is because of how expensive the PS3 is; and one of the main reasons the PS3 is so expensive is because of the Blu-Ray Player. At the same time, Sony spent Billions of dollars on R&D, and lost Billions of dollars from selling the hardware at a loss.

The last consideration is that game development costs have skyrocketed so Sony will see much smaller profits from Sony published games even if they sell at the exact same level as PS2 games did.

And what does Sony gain? In the lifetime of the PS3 (as Sony's main platform) High Definition TV adoption will approach 50% if everything goes according to the electronics manufacturer's plans; a reasonable estimate for Blu-Ray adoption would be 25% to 33% of households. Sony does not get all of the revenue generated from Blu-Ray (its split 6 ways if I remember correctly) and a large portion of that revenue will go to pay for technology licencing costs.

From a business perspective it is difficult to argue that the PS3 isn't one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the videogame industry; this is probably difficult for PS3 fans to accept because the reasons they (probably) love the PS3 are the same reasons why it hurts Sony so much.

first off, if the PS3 launched without BluRay, it might have been cheaper, but what would it have had to set itself apart from the 360 at all? Instead of it being "360 is cheaper and has more games and xbox LIVE" it would have been "360 is the same price and has more games and xbox LIVE"

When it came to lack of games, this was more related to the Cell Processor, and the fact that 360 was paying for 3rd parties and had already established itself over the past year, than it had anything to do with the Blu Ray format.

It STILL would have had PS2 offering the ability to play the whole PS2 library for only $100 as a major hurdle, and it still would have had the Wii with better looking motion controls stealing that thunder.

Any sales that having Blu Ray might have held back are pretty much guaranteed to be gone now that the format war has been decided.

so really, I just don't see how Blu Ray has cost PS3 the VG war. It's really 360's early launch, the Wii's popularity and the PS2's continued popularity that have done the most damage to the PS3.

1. To say that the PS3 did not factor into the format war is foolish. It was not the only factor, sony had all their ducks in a row and HD DVD did not. But to say that the PS3 was a non factor is absolutely wrong. 10 million blu rays vs what might (might) have been parity with HD DVD at this point. Did we not just hear a few months ago that the format war was a stalemate from the mouth of sony? And that was with huge ps3 support. The reason Warner switched is because blu ray had caught and passed HD DVD and was outselling it on a weekly basis. Would not have happened if there had been no ps3. And are you forgetting that the cheapest blu ray player when it released was 1000 bucks? How long would it have taken that to drop in price?

2. Go figure starcraft and madskillz have something negative to say about sony...never would have seen that one coming

We aren't denying it wasn't a factor, but it was one of the minor ones. If Toshiba had made the DRM that Fox and Disney wanted, and made the deals for retail shelf space, HD-DVD would be ahead of Blu-Ray, just that the PS3 would likely keep Blu-Ray around longer.

so how much in billions will the Blu ray market be like 5 years from now? I wonder if it's worth all the competition and ivestment

I am sorry Lorofthenightknight, there is no way that the PS3 was a small factor. Every article i have read has stated the importance of the ps3, every analyst has stated the importance of the ps3. We don't have to agree, I know your reasons on why the blu ray were also important factors but there is no way the ps3 was a minor factor.