First thread creation - so be gentle with my ego.

The PS3 has been billed as a Trojan Horse... A games console first with a built in Hi Def player.

Sony has launched it late and with a high price with the specific intention of getting the Blu Ray HD disc sytem into as many homes as possible - and to make Blu Ray the industry standard format.

Job done. HD DVD is dead.

However - sales have not been stellar for the system. The new raft of bundles (esp. EU - 3 films vs 1 prologue) seem to say that they are entering a new marketing phase for the PS3.

'Buy a Blu-Ray player and get a games console also'

In effect flipping the whole marketing strategy around - now using their HD player as the Trojan Horse to get their games console in living rooms.

Are we going to be subjected to a new raft of commercial activities where the primary focus is the HD player?

For me, this seems to be appropriate - Blu Ray is the future (until downloads...) and now the war is over they must push the HD player as the primary focus (aongside any big hitter games). It comes down to the casuals again I suppose - the big market is the HD player market (if it reaches DVD size) the smaller market is the games. However they probably make more money from the games - so they will use the HD capability to push PS3 into the mainstream, hoping to make their dosh by converting these people to gamers.

Look at the demographics and you'll see that the people who are buying the PS3 as a BR player aren't the least bit interested in buying games. Put another way - some folks buy cars to street race - they'll get Evos, or WRXes, or even Infiniti G35s and soup them up to earn some $$$ - however, most folks buy cars and will never, ever race them.

Just because a machine has the capacity to offer the buyers the ability to play video games doesn't mean they will jump over to that. It's a huge gamble for Sony in this regard. If the hardware keeps rising and the software sales stay stagnant, who's winning? Most console makers will admit they make money off the software sold. Even if Sony is selling consoles touted as the best and cheapiest BR player, they will just win one battle - being the go-to BR player. The game platform - shoot, Harrison said they'd sell 5 million consoles without games - was second tier from jump and to think that's gonna change - all I can say is wow. If folks are buying the PS3 without several AAA titles, and just touting is as the best BR player on the market, why should Sony change?

With the delayed launch, it was clear that Sony cared much, much more about BR than gaming (hence why they dropped BC and reduced the number of USB ports to just two ports). Maybe that will change, but with Sony at the helm of a format victory, they'll prove just how much they care about the consumer soon.

It's definelty not that cryptic. The PS2 was the only last gen system to have a DVD player in it (I know the XBOX had one, but not really), anad were PS2 software sales low? No. Blu-Rayi s only the icing on the cake. This is just a case of people wanting to look for every black lining in a silver cloud, because it is impossible to say the words "Sony", and "good" in the same sentence.

Now everyone will say "oh, it's only selling because it's a Blu-Ray player!".

It seems like Sony is damned if they do, and damned if they don't. No matter what they do, it'll be looked at wrong. If Blu-Ray lost, it would have been "Sony wasted all the money and time on Blu-Ray, and now the PS3 is worthless".

Also, I think that you're reading far too much into the lack of b/c in the forty gig. That doesn't mean they're not marketing it as a game console, They took out b/c to drop the price, and the eighty gig still has b/c. You are cherry picking. You act like the eighty gig doesn't even exist.

And sony didn't delay their launch. I think we can all see that Microsoft launced a year early. I mean, has there ever been a console that has had only four years between launches? I mean, if Microsoft didn't launch a year early, care to explain RRoD to me? That's something that would have been done during testing of the console, and MS obviously didn't do that. At least not enough.

And software isn't stagnant... PS3 DMC4 is selling on Par with 360 DMC4. How does that happen with a userbase 6.86 million lower? I'd think that software is just fine.