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.
Now that you mention it the 360 would have made the most sense to ship with HDMI since the original Xbox was the first console to launch with Ethernet access built-in.
HDMI combined with a Blu-ray player, instead of a separate HD-DVD, could have given it the edge over the PS3. Although Blu-ray is/was a Sony technology they ended up having to do it anyways in the Xbox One ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Slightly, yes. Most balanced generation, absolutely. Depending on who you ask and when you take the snapshot the PS3 got a couple million units ahead, on account of being in manufacturing longer in some regions.
No issues with the rest of your post, though. The original 360 didn’t even come with a hard drive as standard, which I think people forget (but game devs had to struggle with for the whole generation, since back-compat with launch models was mandatory until very late).
The move of keeping it as cheap as possible and getting the money back in subscriptions proved very successful, though. I guess we’re all paying the price of how forward looking that was, including Microsoft.
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 don’t think CD-i and 3DO should be counted for this.
The 3DO had a weird business model and the price point was considering it didn’t sell at a loss like most consoles do – It didn’t catch on because it was a weird interstitial thing that was more powerful than the then-popular SNES/Mega Drive but leagues less powerful than the (already announced, already on the way) PS1 and Saturn.
And the CD-i? That one didn’t even intend to be a games console at first. Philips was trying to make a ~multimedia machine~ out of a belief that those 90s interactive encyclopedia/activity center CD-Roms that were popular on PC were the future of consumer media. It was priced like a high-end media player, because that’s what they meant for it to be. They only pivoted to games at the ass-end of its lifecycle in hopes of salvaging the unmitigated disaster that had turned out to be. And when they did, they did so with a redesigned model that had a lot of the high-end features removed to “console-ize” their multimedia player, making it much cheaper.
Hey, they were both advertised alongside the rest of the gen 5 consoles, they absolutely count.
But hey, if you’re gonna be that guy AND ignore the post-PS3 consoles that all launched at higher prices, how about the Neo Geo? Because that launched at $650 in 1991 money.
The point is that no, the PS3 does not hold “have the dubious honor of most expensive console at launch” by any definition of that concept.
The base model of the 360 shipped with no hard drive at all, it used memory cards. I know because that was the SKU I got until I bought an add-on drive. The 20GB one was the big one. Nobody thought the 20GB PS3 compared unfavorably to the base Xbox SKU.
I mean, you’re right that people fixated on the 60GB model in that the $600 tag was a psychological barrier, but it certainly wasn’t the most expensive console at launch, mainstream or not. It takes a bit of cherry picking to argue that the Neo Geo wasn’t mainstream or that the absolutely existing 20GB model (also the SKU I got) doesn’t count.
Ultimately, price was a factor and the PS3 launch was weak, but it wasn’t a disaster and it wasn’t as overpriced as people make it out to be, as you said.
deleted by creator
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.
Now that you mention it the 360 would have made the most sense to ship with HDMI since the original Xbox was the first console to launch with Ethernet access built-in.
HDMI combined with a Blu-ray player, instead of a separate HD-DVD, could have given it the edge over the PS3. Although Blu-ray is/was a Sony technology they ended up having to do it anyways in the Xbox One ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Slightly, yes. Most balanced generation, absolutely. Depending on who you ask and when you take the snapshot the PS3 got a couple million units ahead, on account of being in manufacturing longer in some regions.
No issues with the rest of your post, though. The original 360 didn’t even come with a hard drive as standard, which I think people forget (but game devs had to struggle with for the whole generation, since back-compat with launch models was mandatory until very late).
The move of keeping it as cheap as possible and getting the money back in subscriptions proved very successful, though. I guess we’re all paying the price of how forward looking that was, including Microsoft.
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 don’t think CD-i and 3DO should be counted for this.
The 3DO had a weird business model and the price point was considering it didn’t sell at a loss like most consoles do – It didn’t catch on because it was a weird interstitial thing that was more powerful than the then-popular SNES/Mega Drive but leagues less powerful than the (already announced, already on the way) PS1 and Saturn.
And the CD-i? That one didn’t even intend to be a games console at first. Philips was trying to make a ~multimedia machine~ out of a belief that those 90s interactive encyclopedia/activity center CD-Roms that were popular on PC were the future of consumer media. It was priced like a high-end media player, because that’s what they meant for it to be. They only pivoted to games at the ass-end of its lifecycle in hopes of salvaging the unmitigated disaster that had turned out to be. And when they did, they did so with a redesigned model that had a lot of the high-end features removed to “console-ize” their multimedia player, making it much cheaper.
Hey, they were both advertised alongside the rest of the gen 5 consoles, they absolutely count.
But hey, if you’re gonna be that guy AND ignore the post-PS3 consoles that all launched at higher prices, how about the Neo Geo? Because that launched at $650 in 1991 money.
The point is that no, the PS3 does not hold “have the dubious honor of most expensive console at launch” by any definition of that concept.
Fair enough.
deleted by creator
The base model of the 360 shipped with no hard drive at all, it used memory cards. I know because that was the SKU I got until I bought an add-on drive. The 20GB one was the big one. Nobody thought the 20GB PS3 compared unfavorably to the base Xbox SKU.
I mean, you’re right that people fixated on the 60GB model in that the $600 tag was a psychological barrier, but it certainly wasn’t the most expensive console at launch, mainstream or not. It takes a bit of cherry picking to argue that the Neo Geo wasn’t mainstream or that the absolutely existing 20GB model (also the SKU I got) doesn’t count.
Ultimately, price was a factor and the PS3 launch was weak, but it wasn’t a disaster and it wasn’t as overpriced as people make it out to be, as you said.
Giant enemy crabs
Yeah, the PS3 had some great exclusives, but it was an awful console overall.