Online was indeed free, but also crap and offline for months after PSN got completely hacked. FTP games are still free to play online, but yes it sucks Sony followed and made paying for online mandatory. However PS3 was also rife with online passes, so it wasn't entirely free to play online. Second hand games you had to buy the online pass separately. (Or to play your disc online on a different account)

Europe models were not full BC, and to reduce price full BC capability was removed. Plus BC was a separate mode without any boost capability like the PS5 now has. I lost my FF12 saves due to a corrupted virtual memory card (I pressed the off button while it was still saving to virtual memory card I guess)
Btw thanks to the PS4 Pro, a lot of PS4 games make more use of PS5' extra power.

My PS3 controllers did break within 2 years. My 2 launch model PS3s did as well after 3 years.

But it did have the cheapest and best blu-ray player for a long time. Early dedicated blu-ray players at the time of PS3 release were slow, cost $2,000 and became obsolete because they couldn't get patched. PS3 did add 3D blu-ray support later through some magic.

PS3 was great, but expensive and had plenty issues. Modern consoles may suck, but try installing a game on PS3 again that had many patches. It takes days to get GT5 fully working again on a PS3 from original disc install... Patching, installing, OS in general, PS3 feels horribly slow nowadays. It's still a great blu-ray player though :)

Let's not glorify gen 7. I had 2x YloD, went through 7 ps3 controllers, 2x RRoD, 360 charge packs failed after 3 years, HDD failure in PS3 (months to redownload my digital games as I was still on a 60GB monthly limit connection), Disc drive failure in the Wii, Charge packs for Wii remotes all failed, Balance board connection failure. Gen 7 has been the worst for durability.

It's a win win for Sony. A lot of people will the selling their launch PS5's, cheaper PS5s in the market to attract new customers, while not losing money on selling PS5 Pro. (Depends on whether enough sell to cover R&D)

Normally it's time for cheaper slim consoles to come out around this time. The market conditions are not right for that anymore, prices are only going up. So get more 2nd hand consoles out there...

Didn't even think about this aspect of it but you're right. Might help Sony get more users on PS5 overall.

Gaming changed. I can remember an article where Sony published their top played games per region. It was full of free to play games like fortnite, Apex and such. Sure Gaas games do make money, because there are whales around that spend serious money on them. But a lot of people play those games with not spending anything. So if the non-spenders buy a Playstation that Sony looses money on, Sony possibly does not recoup that from selling games. The loss leader strategy therefore is probably not as effective anymore.

Why is the UK getting a much higher price point?

I am comparing it to this console generation, not the 360. I am talking about 7th gen vs 9th gen, in the second part of the post. The first one was only about PS3. Even if you want PS3 alone, there weren't many games in those launch years compared to the later years for it, however they were still more and better than the games released for PS5 so far. Other thing is almost all of the games on PS5 so far are available on the PS4 as well. And I am not including them. I am pointing out 7th gen exclusives vs 9th gen exclusives, not games available on the last generation too. However even if we include them last gen and next gen it's still way better period for games 2006-2008 PS2&PS3 vs the PS4&PS5 2020-2024.

The controllers things maybe it's just you. I have never had any problems with my dual shocks, for 15 years I had total of 3. And not because they broke, but because in the beginning I bought second so that I can play with a friend from home, on one console, both of those controllers lasted many many years. In 2015-2016 I changed my first controller with brand new one limited edition, cuz first the limited edition one was nicer and second the battery after so many years of play wasn't as good as new one. I am still playing with this controller to this day and it's flawless. The other one the second for home party playing I sold in 2018 because it wasn't needed anymore. Other than that many of my friends were also very happy with their dual shocks 3s, and even many customers from the video game store I worked in before too. Guess you just didn't have luck with them or maybe some of them were fake (there were many of those fake ones selling all over the web) or they may be sixasix, for which I can't tell anything about durability. Also I am not saying dual shock 3s are bulletproof, but that they are way better for longevity than the PS5 or even PS4 controllers. And especially battery.

Also about your PS3 systems failed, I haven't said anything about that, don't know why you included it. The first years of the PS3 and the 360 were full of systems that were overheating and getting YLOD and RROD left and right. That is a fact. If you get the latter revisions you are like bulletproof. Especially the last versions of the FAT systems for both consoles or the slim ones. I have the last FAT units from both, and they are simply tanks. And no, I am not saying this just because my systems got lucky or something. I researched specially about that on the web, since it was very interesting topic for me, watched videos, look through reddit posts, comments, forum posts and wikipedia dev sites for both systems and all the revisions. The best 360 system out there are not the S models or the E ones, but the FAT Jaspers and the FAT tonaskets/kronoses (the jasper v2), and for PS3 is debatable which is the most reliable there is many opinions if it's the later slim models from 2011 or the last FATs. But either way the last FATs are either the most reliable or the second most reliable after the slims from 2011. But in short, if you have gotten bad revision the chances of YLOD or RROD are big. This is maybe the only better thing the 8th gen and 9th gen has over the 7th gen. And it's partial since it's only for the launch years of those systems, after that they were just as reliable.

About the backward compatibility, I am giving example here of the launch units. that are the US and Japan ones, not the later ones. I know very well that they cut the backward compatibility later, but even if you throw the Europe units partially or not partially it's still better. The XBOX 360 had one too, which was for all of it's models. And braking or not I am talking about what we get at the time, vs what we are getting now. Not what the company later decided to remove or if those models were braking.

The pricing discussion makes me think.

I bought the original NES as a package with the light gun and Super Mario Bros & Duck Hunt. This was the standard package in my country, do not know if that was the case in other countries.

What of Switch2 will be $499, including a new Mario game & a smaller 'gimmick' game. Would that be a good price?

Pretty much; if Xbox was good for one thing it was giving Sony at least some direct competition so that they actually had to try to win over consumers. Now that Xbox is dying, there's nothing to keep Sony honest.

To quote Yahtzee; "when you don't have to compete, you don't have to care."

I mostly play PSVR2 games since it came out. No lack of games to play there. I still have many unplayed games from the first couple years as well, while I had nothing to play on PS3 first year but PS2 games. But to be fair I have a lot less time for gaming now.

PS3 had a great library but it came later, but indeed still faster than it's going this gen.

Btw you're praising the durability of the later systems, while also praising the BC of the launch models. There were no durable BC systems, hence I mentioned it. I lost both BC machines. What we're getting now is durable machines without having to worry what revision / model number you're on.

What we're also getting now is full BC with PS4, with the games running better and loading faster. Much better BC than PS3 had.

As for the controllers, I had a lot more time to play back then. Plus 2 small kids and my wife playing as well. Lots of wear and tear. One big issue was the flimsy charge port, not kid proof. Once you can't charge the controller anymore it's worthless. Also sticky kid fingers lead to sticky face buttons that get stuck :/

My kids are older now, less sticky :p I play a lot less, actually more with the Sense controllers than the Dualsense. So far they're lasting a lot better. However my oldest keeps getting stick drift (he plays a lot).

DS4 were bad as well. The R2 trigger kept failing or rather not going 100% after a lot of use. Since I was playing GT Sport non stop, no good if you only get 95% throttle...

Anyway so far I have had the least issues this gen, but also the play less :/

PC.