The PS3 actually ended up outselling the 360 slightly. Like, very slightly. Couple 100k units or so. It’s probably the most balanced console generation in terms of sales.
Then Microsoft launched the Xbox One and Sony wiped the floor with them.
Honestly, if Sony just only added half as much shit to the PS3, like skip all those card readers god damn, they probably could’ve gotten away with being slightly more expensive than the 360. I mean, the 360 on launch didn’t have an HDMI port, didn’t have WiFi, none of the 360s come with a Blu-ray player (when movies just started being sold on Blu-ray and being a DVD player was one of the reasons the PS2 sold so damn well), you had to pay for multiplayer (I think that was in at launch, right?) and the console itself just kept bricking. Like, on a consumer side technical level, the only thing it had going for it was the controller. But, give it a year headstart and make it cheaper than the competition and that shit stops mattering for quite a while.
The PS3 is absolutely not the most expensive console on launch, either adjusted for inflation or not. The CD-i and the 3DO both were $700 at launch and the 20GB model of the PS3 started at 499$, just like the Xbox One, which many people have memory holed because the 60GB 599$ made such a stir for being expensive.
The launch lineup was relatively weak out of the gate, though, that much is true, although a bit exaggerated. There are some underrated games in that early batch, just no proper system seller. It was a bit better in Europe where at least CoD 3, Oblivion and a bunch of third party games were available soon after launch.
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.
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 do understand what you’re saying, but it’s kind of hard to call it “better hardware” in light of how difficult it was to actually develop for.
Someone had to develop a chip for the next video game console. That console didn’t provide any value in itself, but was a platform to enable actual game studios to create immersive games for users. The chip design they chose hindered developers from doing that to the point that they were regularly outperformed by a far cheaper chipset.
I have a lot of respect for the nerdy details of the cell processor, and why it’s an interesting processor architecture, but in the sum total context of what it was designed to do I would push back a little on calling it ‘better’.
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.
At the time, the PS3 was the cheapest bluray player out there when it launched. Also, this is andetodical, but my university had a cluster of PS3s booted into Linux to be used for Machine Learning, as it was the most affordable higher end GPUs you could get at the time. I’m surprised people think the PS3 was bad, but I guess from a business perspective, selling hardware at a loss expecting to make it up in game sales probably didn’t work out as well as execs hoped, because the PS3 had more capabilities than just playing games. I’d guess there’s a sizeable number of PS3 consoles which were purchased without ever buying a game to go along with it.
The ps3 was closer to 600 dollars then. Which is of course an even worse price. In addition, Xbox had a huge online lead. Xbox live was good during the original Xbox (nicer than the PS2’s online service) it got better with the Xbox 360 and Sony was left trying to catch up in a time when online games really took off.
Lol no one cares about rrod. It sucked for the first year of 360 buyers, they all got new consoles and that was basically that.
Xbox 360 was fairly dominant compared to the PS3 everywhere but Japan, and it’s a testament to the failure of Xbox leadership at the time how much the One launch flipped the tables.
Launching an always online, living room webcam / microphone in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations was wildly bad timing, on top of a lot of poor decisions to focus too much on tv and entertainment instead of gaming and you ended up with a gamer revolt. Then you had the utterly absurd failed launch of their core franchise on the console, which just hammered home their lack of focus on gaming, and it was never going to recover.
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
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.
The main reason people call it a disastrous launch is because it was Sony, right after the best selling console on the world, the PS2.
If it was any other company, the launch would be considered a huge success despite the controversy but for it to go toe to toe to the successor of OG Xbox, which in your own words didn’t do that great is a pretty big fall.
