Klaus, the console was the best example of how Sony's mixed priorities and poor integration get in the way. Maybe from the broader perspective, Sony will benefit from getting Blue-Ray established, but I think the whole technology-driven approach of the PS3 was a mistake.
They sacrificed the Playstation franchise at a time when Playstation was their only market-leading brand. Vaio, Walkman, the online music store, etc were all far from the leaders in their class. Meanwhile, Playstation2 had danced all over Xbox, Nintendo and even forced Sega into console retirement. The way they handed impetus to Xbox was reminiscent of AC Milan in their 2nd leg against Deportivo La Coruna in 2004.
So they make a console that's got too much technology for the price point, in the hope that they would go down the experience curve quickly enough to bring the price down. Of course, to go down the experience curve, you need to pump out the damn thing at a high rate, and if your rival is selling a product with more games at half the price, then you're going to struggle to do that. And as Burns noted, software developers hate it. The least Sony could have done was build an intermediate interface to make coding easier.
It pointed to an engineering-driven culture, poor prioritization and a real lack of consumer insight at Sony.
