PS3 was a huge failure.
Design (originally without an gpx): Failed
Cost: Failed
Maintain or gain market share: Failed

The PS3 was such a failure it ate almost all previous Playstation profits.

Successful as a gaming machine, but failure on it's own merits.  PS3's failures are lessons learned leading to PS4's success.

Haha Im sorry, I dont think I was clear at all :) 85m units sold is GREAT, but if you consider that they "lost" almost as many consoles compared to the gen before, it doesnt look as impressive. PS2 sold close to 160m and DOMINATED the market, and along comes PS3 which drops everything PS2 had build up. 160m - 85m, 75% market share - 30%. I mean, that is NOT good. But 85m in itself is a great number, but compared to its predecessor, its barely even good...

I think this is a pretty good metric to judge a product if its a failure or success!

I replied to soundofrain above, please do read it :) also, feel free to read Rols thoughts on failure, which also can be seen just above.

all the bad press, the initial high price and subsequent price drop and HW design all contributes to the failure, whether or Sony managed to turn things around eventually. They made the best of a bad situation, but that doesnt necessarily mean the situation wasnt still sour.

Andthis is certainly NOT a click bait thread! I recent that description. This is a valid and interesting subject to discuss. But yes, a Wii U thread wont be necessary since we ALL know its a failure. Should I make  a Vita thread also? No, of course not, because that might be an even bigger failure than Wii U.

Sometimes is hard to call, that's the point. It's easy to say "Sega Saturn" was a failure because it sold 9M. But the PS3? It lost marketshare, but it sold 80M+. The SNES? It won the gen, but lost what was a monopoly to end up at almost 50/50 and failing to outsell its predecessor. Genesis? It lost the gen, but put Sega as a prime player. 3DS? It gained share but the overall handheld market lost terrain. X1? It sells well but is losing the market share of the 360.

In the end, it's only easy to call the absolute failures (Xbox, GC, Wii U, Vita, Saturn, etc) and the absolute winners (NES, DS, Game Boys, PS1, PS2, PS4).

I don't like to judge something's success based on previous numbers. 80M is great either way. I see your point though, when compared to PS2, it sold poorly. 

Anything compared to the PS2 sold poorly.

Agreed

It is 2nd most sold console of last gen. Great game library, blu-ray, media player, easier to upgrade HDD. It is awesome console but it could end up as the worst Sony console because I think PS4 is going to do 100+million easily

In short I would say this about last gen, from my point of view.

The Wii was extremely successful and rode on the hype for many years until it died out and Nintendo naturally moved on, with a lot of profit earned. Enough said.

Extremely successful. Money, money, money!

The Xbox 360 was very successful, had a one years head start that got them all the third party support early on which Sony had to fight hard to get back. It cost MS a lot of money but in the end I would say the X360 was indeed successful. Successful but not profitable. They got the market share they wanted but it cost them way too much to do so. Especially the money wasted in the Japanese market to gain absolutely nothing, I can only imagine how much money they invested in exclusive Japanese titles and advertisement, all for nothing. And all the money spent on the North American market, which indeed paid off at least.

Successful but... too much $$$/¥¥¥ needed to achieve it!

The PS3 had a horrible start and I would say that I can not call the PS3 neither a success nor a failure. They outsold the X360, even with a year less on the market, but it cost them a truck load of money to do so. So I would say that they were semi-successful at a very costly price. It cost them so much money the first years to turn everything around, in all markets. Sold their consoles at a high loss everywhere and had to do many changes until they finally could turn it around. And to win back all the third party support from X360 took them quite a while since it was the main third party console for almost the whole generation, in my mind. At least the first few years, the most important years. And not to mention all the market share they lost, some to X360 but mostly to the Wii.

Semi-successful but... way too much $$$/€€€/£££/¥¥¥ needed to achieve it!