with a "how microsoft defeated sony" and "how sony defeated microsoft" thread out there I thought this one was inevitable....  Feel free to discuss if anyone agrees.......

actually that is the only one that makes sense.The minute they put a 600-700 US $ price tag on it the knew it's gonna be a tough ride this generation.hopefully they will use similar technology next round(PS4) to keep the cost down .just beef up PS3 from 500mb to 2 gig ram and graphical card, use a new cell with more cores, and use a 6X speed bluray drive.

I agree with this thread actually.

Sony defeated itself launching a $600 system,barely any decent games at launch,and idiotic PR.

Thankfully,Sony has attempted to right these wrongs,which shows that they at least give a slight damn.

Sony doesn't exist in a vacuum. Had they done differently their competitors may have too and Sony may have ended up in a worse place than they are now.

The PS1 was the hands down dominant console of the 5th generation. The PS2 may very well have been the overall greatest console ever made. Over 10 years of domination, and the PS3 is still trying to find it's niche. Damn right, Sony beat themselves. There was no other console that had the notoriety and acclaim that Sony's Playstation brand had. How did it go so wrong so fast?

This is the best of the three threads. As much as MS would like to take credit for the fall of the Playstation Brand its SONY who brought it down. Theres a timeline somewhere showing the steps to their failure.

They made many of the mistakes of the current gen in the previous gen and they got away with it once, but not twice.

The PS2 was:

• Difficult to program.
• Didn't have the proper tools for third parties until much later.

Its just that other mistakes such as price they made this generation compounded with repeats of the above to make an all round mess of things.

The thing is, there was no console strong enough to call them on their mistakes last time so they repeated the mistakes this time. Its like how the seeds of failure for the N64 were sown in the SNES generation between Nintendo and third parties.

Now that their stranglehold on the console market has been broken completely, they can ill afford to repeat any of the mistakes they made in the past. They are essentially starting afresh with the PS4.

Quality compared to price.

Non-essential features (Luxuries) which increased the price.

Losing exclusives (And not just a few, almost every single non first party exclusive went multi-platform). 

This in a nutshell is why Sony is down on sales.   A 200$ PS3 would be flying off the shelves.  (Maybe not Wii-esque, but damn close).  A PS3 that is within 150$ of the 360 outsells it on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis.  That 200$ price difference is just too steep for them to overcome.

The problem for Sony lies ahead.  They have a console that is too similar to the Xbox 360.  Every sale that they lose to the Xbox 360 represents a dwindling potential buyer pool primarily because of price which results in even more difficulty to maintain the marketshare they desire.   They need a price cut as soon as humanly possible in the worst possible way.  People need to have access to their system.  (They have some very good games that make the console worthwhile) but with the 400$ albatross over their head it just isn't enough when you can get a 360 for 200$ for the average consumer.

Essentially, it's just a price thing.  Not much else.

^This

agree... 600$ for a gaming console? yea right

PS: I own a PS3... still waiting for GOW III