What would be the state of Playstation 3 if Sony had released it with a regular DVD drive instead of a Blu-Ray player? What would it's price point be? How many PS3 users would we see today? What are your thoughts?

SONY would be in 2nd place right now.

PS3's launch price would be $399 probably....now it would be at $259

HD DVD would have won the next gen DVD format war. Sony would be losing millions...and would be in a dogfight with Microsoft for scraps. Nintendo is unaffected.

With a $400 price tag it would have smashed the 360 at launch.

HD-DVD would have won because it was the cheaper one like disolitude said so sony would be losing money on a different front. And the PS3's sales are kind of hard to judge because for many people, blu-ray was the sway.

The simple answer is we'll never know because I get the feeling that no matter how low sony could have dropped their price, M$ would have gone even lower. If ps3 was $300 by now with no blu-ray, x360 might have been $150, you never know.

If its price tag reflected its lack of blu it would probably be no.2 or at the very least a much much smaller gap and much more competitiveness in terms of third party support. Nintendo would be unaffected for the most part. Blu probably would have lost to HD-DVD which may be bad for Sony. I hate all things HD anyway tho so I would probably like the PS3 alot more.

I would have done something more dev-friendly (a more traditional CPU/GPU) than the Cell, and kept the Blu-ray. Blu-ray component price is falling very fast. That would have probably made the launch price under $400 and $250 to $300 now. From what I've heard, the XDR Ram is one of the most expensive components now that is needed by the Cell.

The lower price tag would have been great but...could sony really then say the ps3 is in any way better than the 360?

The PS3 would still put out HD graphics. the Blu-Ray player only also allows it to play HD movies...

As to the rest of your sentiment though I agree.  IT would either be second, or have a MUCH smaller gap with the 360, even given the year headstart the 360 had.

What an odd price.

Hmm, good question. Well, the PS3 supposedly cost ~$800 at launch, and Blu-ray was probably a 1/4 of the cost (I'm making up numbers here), so let's say they manufactured it for $600. They probably would have launched it at $500 or $450, which would have lowered the loss that they took from the PS3, and perhaps they would have been profitable now. However, they would lose any future Blu-Ray money, once it catches on.