I mean I was only thinking of the major, mainstream home consoles. But that’s why I said "may”, the history of experimental game consoles and regional price differences is a whole study itself. But certainly nobody at the time expected Sony to go from a more lower priced option to the most expensive one.
The 20 GB isn’t remembered much because even the Xbox 360’s 20GB model was considered way too small even a year later. Even to this day, the basic model of any console or GPU isn’t really considered the standard, but the budget option.
At least the PS3 let you toss in your own HDD though. The Xbox 360’s proprietary ones (and all its other accessories) were way more expensive.
Really, with all the accessories considered, the PS3 was actually a cheaper console even at $100 more.
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.
I mean I was only thinking of the major, mainstream home consoles. But that’s why I said "may”, the history of experimental game consoles and regional price differences is a whole study itself. But certainly nobody at the time expected Sony to go from a more lower priced option to the most expensive one.
The 20 GB isn’t remembered much because even the Xbox 360’s 20GB model was considered way too small even a year later. Even to this day, the basic model of any console or GPU isn’t really considered the standard, but the budget option.
At least the PS3 let you toss in your own HDD though. The Xbox 360’s proprietary ones (and all its other accessories) were way more expensive.
Really, with all the accessories considered, the PS3 was actually a cheaper console even at $100 more.
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.