@Comrade Tovya: The problem isn't the marketing folks. I believe they do the best they can, but the product itself. With PS3, Sony created itself a product, that is too expensive for people that want one and the people who has the money for it, don't want it, which leads us to 360; the people who play the games most, buy the cheaper 360 instead of more expensive PS3. Now, due to actual demographics, it's unlikely that the PS3 owners would consume as much games as the 360 owners on average.

Yeah, I agree.  But that is a whole 'nother conversation.  I actually made the same point earlier here in the forums.  The Blu-ray function made the PS3 too expensive (by at least $100.00 or more).  They traded HD DVDs destruction for their success in the console war.  I don't think that was their intention, but that's what happened.  In another forum, I made this point right before the PS3 was released, that Blu-ray inclusion would make it too expensive and that Sony would finish last this time.  The Sony fanboys absolutely trashed me for that blasphemy... and they inturn told me that the inclusion of Blu-ray would be what would defeat Nintendo & MS. 

Of course, it goes without saying that I was right...

Either way, Sony made their bed, and now there is nothing they can do to reverse it short of subsidizing their consoles and cutting the price by at least $100.00 (or more at this point).

@Comrade Tovya: I actually did the same notions before launch on another forum too (not a gaming forum, so we had a civil objective discussion). With the difference that i didn't bet PS3 for the last place, although that was before E3 06 and the price announcement.
Frankly, PS3 is performing worse than i expected outside Europe (in Europe PS3 wasn't that much more expensive than PS2 at launch, in case someone didn't know) and i expected PS3 going down in price pretty quickly.

But, i don't believe Sony counted PS3 flopping as an option (it would do better without Wii being there). As from financial point of view, i don't think the strategy was that stupid, outside the huge risk Sony took.
At the moment, BD:s biggest problem isn't adoption rate itsel, but the rate in relation to what Sony promised to movie studios. PS3:s biggest problem at the moment then again is the BD.

I don't think they did either, I just think they were more focused on a Blu-ray victory than a console victory... hence the reason for Blu-ray's initial victory and their consoles probable far 3rd place finish.

Sony's next big obstacle is beating downloadable & streaming media, and that is a much bigger hurdle than HD DVD was.

It they fail with BD & their latest console, that doesn't look good at all.

I actually love Blu-ray myself, but for whatever reason, the average consumer doesn't see it as a big jump from SD DVD.

@Comrade Tovya: I agree. Most propably Sony was "blinded" by the possibility to clean up the whole table.

Personally, i'm not interested in BD or the HD stuff in general. We've watched a few times the stands where they run BD movies to show how good HD looks like (damn those fucks for showing Cars in them, our kids are nailed to the TV:s when Cars is on). My wife sees pretty picture, i see bad framerate. I don't think the picture is much better overall, unless we are talking about viewing interlayced SD on HDTV (progressive is much better).

Most of the "displays" you see of Blu-ray are usually on TVs that aren't calibrated... it's a lot more fantastic that I thought it would be.  I was actually uninterested until it was displayed to me by my father-in-law, and I saw how great it was.  Now is it worth $30 a disc?  No.  Is it better than standard DVD?  Yes, by a long shot... but only if it cost the same price. Otherwise, I'll settle for streaming media until disc prices come down.

Install base and Lack of money.

Thats a good point, I dont know what to say... :l

Funny that 360 owners who buy the system because it's cheap end up having $60 to buy every game at launch but ps3 owners who paid $600 for the system don't buy games because they're broke? A real conundrum...

i really think it's diversity folks PS3 = PS2 with a MUCH SMALLER userbase. Thats it's real problem this gen. PS2 had lots of million sellers because of it's sheer userbase, same with ps1. People say that gamers bought ps1 because of ff7 and point to other games as sole reasons for the ps2 and ps1's successes. I call BS. FF7 only sold 9mil relative to ps1s 100+mil userbase. If every ff7 purchaser bought a brand new ps1 because of the game, it's still barely 10%. On the other hand, the halo franchise has proven to be a consistent system seller for the xbox brand.