I was wondering this earlier today.

Assuming Microsoft could have launched the Xbox 360 at the same date it did, but with a correspondingly higher price, do you think the PS3 would have done substantially worse?

My reasoning is this.  Microsoft and Toshiba made Sony work a LONG time to get Blu-Ray up and going and established as the loan physical disk HD standard.

If Microsoft had sold even three or four million Xbox 360's that first year, all with HD DVD built in, and then Sony had still launched as they did with their high price, I think Blu-Ray would have been incapable of winning the format war.  In such an eventuality, the PS3 would have $100 or so tacked onto the price tag to pay for the inclusion of a redundant format.

Thoughts?

only reason MS is in is because they released a year early. HDDVD would have delayed them and also another reason is because its cheaper.

no microsoft cant crush sony, i agree with lol mature, it had a year ahead so if we're saying they both released the same time ps3 would be above about 5 million

Since we can count the fact that the 360 would have had to release at a similiar $600 price tag, I'm going to say it would have bombed spectacularly. Microsoft was smart to not really put themselves behind that war.

Perhaps, except HD movie sales were and still are far too low to convert studios to the cause. The majority of the movie studios supported Blu-ray during the format war, so the PS3 would have still had the advantage of having the format destined to win. If the 360 had an HD-DVD player, it could have been a disadvantage.

This thread makes the assumption that the Xbox 360 would have launched at the same time it did in reality, just with a higher price tag.

I think it would have done severe damage to the PS3 by crushing Blu-Ray. Of course, it would have been a big risk for Microsoft.

HD-DVD was already beating Blu Ray before Sony interfered in the format wars with the PS3. Hypothetically it would've wounded Microsoft as much as Sony, but HD-DVD still would've won. In reality Microsoft saw no need to focus on DVD players when they wanted the head start to acquire all of the games.

But Blu-Ray only became relevant after the PS3's launch.  If there were already 3 or 4 million HD DVD players out there for a year or so, on top of MS and Toshiba forking out millions for exclusivity, do you really believe studios would have stuck with Blu-Ray?

I seriously doubt it. If anything, HDDVDs inclusion on the Xbox 360 would have only delayed the formats death 6 months or so.

Why wouldn't they have? If the PS3 came out and started selling millions, which it did, than Blu-ray would start to grow as well. Studios stuck with the format because they wanted the format war to cease as quickly as possible. And the 360 would have cost more and probably have been delayed for a couple months at least to work the HD-DVD drive into the console. Microsoft would have lost millions more than they did, and the userbase would have been smaller.