Ok, I know that there are those of you who are going to look at this title and think "oh, whut a fanboy, u haet on PLAYSTATION®3, stfu u n00b" and so on.

But honestly, no, I'm not here to do that at all; I'm fine with Sony right now, so long as they keep their ego where it is now versus a few years ago. No, this post is actually about what others are saying right now, as a few articles are looking at how Sony is allegedly "sabotaging" the PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray, or if the PS3 was ever meant to succeed as a game console.

It began on Friday, as a writer for The Washington Times put forth the notion:

I'm so depressed that Sony seems bound and determined to do everything in its power to hinder the market penetration of the system in particular and Blu-ray in general.

One brief example: Look at the holiday landscape. We're dealing with the worst economy since the Carter years. Deflation looms. Businesses desperately need a big holiday push to boost the bottom line. The Nintendo Wii remains the most popular system in the land, and, at $250, isn't necessarily a budget buster. XBox 360 has made serious inroads by dropping the price of its core system to $199. So how did Sony respond?

By releasing a new version of the PS3 ... that's $100 more expensive. Yes, it comes with a game, and yes, it has more hard-drive space, to which I respond: Who cares? Was the marketplace clamoring for more memory from the PS3? Is that why its market penetration is so low compared to its predecessors and competition? What were the Sony execs thinking? -- The Washington Times

The writer continues on, saying that Sony hasn't marketed the Blu-ray experience well (I think they've done alright by it), and that the format may perish. You can read the whole story here.

This post was in turn picked up yesterday by Second Story Gamer, who concedes that TWT's writer has points about the pricing and Netflix, but disagrees that the Blu-ray format has been marketed improperly and that people are largely ignorant of the format. You can read that rebuttal here.

Finally, CinemaBlend looks back at something IGN said of the PS3 specs at E3 2005, and draws an interesting conclusion:

...it's not the specs that gave away the PS3's general purpose, it was the intention of the specs. The one comment that stands out above them all in the article is the one that pinpoints what the PS3 has displayed in realtime gameplay (at present) and for what Sony was really using the PS3 for, as the comments states: "Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games."

...

Even if the PS3 is Sony's last console Sony still wins. Whether the PS3 turns a profit or tanks, Sony still wins. For those of who you don't know what I'm talking about, simply understand that Sony, as an electronic giant, simply needs to survive the economic ebb to reap the benefits of what the PlayStation 3 established for the company. That establishment happens to be the Blu-ray format. The company didn't intend for the PS3 to succeed as the next big console, so much as they intended it to push their new format through the door, successfully. And it did. -- Cinema Blend

You can read that full article here, if you wish.

Me, I don't think that Sony's going down the hole or anything; some have labeled it the GameCube of the current generation, though admittedly the GameCube was at least profitable for Nintendo, while it has been hinted by Sony that it may be sometime in 2009 before the PS3 makes a profit.

So while I'm not sure they'll overcome the Xbox 360, much less the Wii without some major, earth-shattering changes, I don't believe they need to man the lifeboats yet, either.