Yes thye should have. Keep PS3 another year hype would be building people would put off buying another system and then they could release the PS3 for a low but still good price

But that's what got me interested in the PS3 in the first place...

Well, Amiga won the battle with the Atari ST, the c64 won battling the ZX spectrum, the Amiga CD32 game console was outselling PC CDROM, MegaCD, CDi and C= was unable to meet demand until C= finally went out of business.

Sure entry prices matter a lot, but one important reason why Nintendo won several console generations was not due to their consoles being less powerfull, it's due to their excellent popular franchises which kids, me included, loved to play. I loved Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior on the Coleco vision and Mario Bros on the c64. Super Mario was a very appealing yet a not very demanding game like Tetris and Pacman were in the early days.

I think it can be argued which console was really the least powerful this last generation, I have yet to see anything coming close to God of War 2. The PS2 being harder to port multi-platform games to does not make it less powerful per se, as the Amiga had similar problems when games weren't designed with the Amiga's powerful architecture in mind. I think of the last generation, all the consoles had their strenghts and weaknesses. 

I wondered about this question too a few months ago. (I even made a thread about it, but there was not so much interest for that topic back then... but I guess that was because my post was not that well explained)

I think you're right Bod. I think everybody would have been happy with such a decision except the hardcore gamers. Especially for publishers, because they could sell to a 120 million audience instead of one of 10 million. It would even have been better if there were no Wii, because the new features of it may would still make quite a lot of consumers shift so that Wii could get it's niche.

But if there were nothing so special like the Wii, Sony could have destroyed it's competitors with such a tactic. If they would have made clear after the anouncements of the 360 and a new Nintendo console that they won't release a new system til 2011, which developers would have supported the new consoles?

Not too mention it would of given Sony another year to properlyintroduce their motion sensing/pointer funtion/rumble controller =)

I can't speak for everyone but like I bought A500 games for my much more powerful A1200, I am buying PS2 games for my PS3 as well. So far I've bought Ape Escape 2 & 3, Jak3, God of War 1 & 2 and I may soon also download PS1 games like Crash Bandicoot when available from the European playstation store. The PSN is an additional option available to developers to cheaply distribute their (i.e. lower budget) games.

I think both the 360 and PS3 could have improved their positions if they delayed their consoles for a year. They would debut at lower price due to extra investment in making the system cheaper, and would have had a better launch lineups and more steady game lineups though their first year. Obviously the PS2 couldn't roll forever, but it could have kept Sony afloat another year easily without a next gen console. Next gen other than Wii seems to be on a probation period by consumers, mostly due to price. A year for both could have done everyone good.

well MikeB I thought that this is done by many people, I expected that great Cube games would get sales boosts because people are buying the wii that haven't owned a Cube, but this market seems to be tiny because I don't see it happen, stores are only selling out their stock of Cube games and are removing them from the shelves.

and about launching later: I'm very sceptical about this. It is very rare that a console can makeup a gap that existed because of a headstart of a competitor, and the Wii would have gained a lot of steam during this one year of headstart. I think you either have to be as early as possible, or you have to skip a generation.

I think you are discounting the importance of blue ray to Sony as a media company. Despite the PS3 not being as successful as Sony would have liked, it has all but ensured blue ray is the HD format for the next decade. Strategy wise, I think that is a little more important to Sony as a whole than the console wars, and blue ray was timing sensitive for hopes to win... Sure, Sony would like to win both wars, but Sony is more than just a video game console company, and at least by bundling the blue ray they won one war.

Damn that is so true.