what is the top right one? i recognize the xbox one logo but i have no idea about that one.
Wow, people here were in high school or not born back then, huh? Crap.
No, the PS3 wasn’t that bad. It dominated pretty quickly in EU and Japanese territories where people weren’t as keen on Xbox Live, and once they dropped backwards compatibility and the price (still hate that, I’ve re-bought a fat PS3 later in life), they actually caught up and ended up narrowly outselling the 360.
It’s one of those consoles that performed differently in different regions, like the OG Xbox and the N64, which did way worse than people think. It ended up being a pretty even split, so Americans in particular remember the launch as being disastrous and it has become a bit of a trope. It wasn’t a good launch, but definitely not one of the top three worst console launches in history, even among the mainstream players.
Along with what’s already been mentioned, it was very difficult to program for due to some interesting hardware differences and took developers a few years to really figure out which lead to some poor performance despite better hardware.
I was in highschool when the PS3 and 360 were in their prime. It was almost like the console wars part 2, but it was a cold social war. A lot of people had one or the other, but rarely both. What console you had heavily decided who your friends were. Depending on who was in your halo party, or fragging out in COD, or co-oping through borderlands 2. That was your crew. You spent hours with them and it really changed how strong some bonds were more than people realized. The PS3 had a somewhat luxury feel to it, while the 360 was more cool, I particularly liked the blade UI. The PS3 was perfectly fine, but it was pricier and therefore less popular amongst middle/lower class families. I worked at the time and saved up for both. My core group of friends played PlayStation, so that’s what I rocked for online games and as my primary. My 360 was jtagged with a rgh and I yanked out the disc drive and replaced it with a bigger hard drive. That was solely for pirated solo games and exclusives. Good times. The following generation I was strictly PS4 until switching to PC full time
I remember it took Fooooreveeer for quality titles to come out. Plus, in my opinion The PS2 Was such a juggernaut that the PS3 had way too many expectations for what a PS2 successor should be.
Overall, wasn’t THAT bad all things considered. It got Blue Ray to beat out HD DVD which lets be honest, was Sony’s main reason for releasing the console.
Too young to remember but I do know the original PS3 was marketed more as a multimedia device, and started at $499 in 2006, which is over $750 today. That probably gave the Xbox 360 a boost. However the PS3 is likely viewed more favorably today since the slim model was much cheaper and marketed as a gaming console rather than multimedia, whereas Microsoft had the Red Ring of Death to deal with before they went down the Multimedia marketing path, which culminated in the Xbox One launch, also pictured.
