"-Initial price and arrogant attitude from Sony, eventually taking away backwards compatibility with PS2 games "
I already explained the initial price. It wasn't weird, just a reason why the platform took longer to be accepted as a game console. As a Blu-Ray player it was much appreciated. As for PS2 compatibility it was in there in there for the initial release, and even stuck around for the most part in the 80gb model I bought about a year after release. They took it out to cut costs because it required some dedicated chips, and not to mention, but if you really wanted to play PS2 games you could always just buy a PS2. I picked one up for $50.
"-Lousy advertising that might have influenced the sales "
I wouldn't know. I don't watch commercials. I didn't buy it because of commercials.
-The lack of a killer-app exclusive for the first couple of years
Resistance: Fall of Man came out with release; MotorStorm, MLB 07: The Show, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Warhawk, Heavenly Sword, and Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction all came out in the first year. I don't get this criticism at all. These platforms don't live and breath on exclusive titles, they both after all run on variants of the same technology, but Sony has sponsored some terrific exclusives.
"-The Heavy Rain incident that deleted people's save files"
I never bought Heavy Rain. It sounded dumb.
"There's probably a bunch I'm forgetting but Sony has done a poor job of handling this system at times and it should be at least ahead of the 360 worldwide."
The PS3 is way ahead of the Xbox worldwide - that is if you exclude the US. Obviously Xbox has its own strengths and Microsoft has been very aggressive at keeping the entry price of the Xbox lower even if the thing had to be stripped down to the point of near uselessness.
"Yes the 360 does a year advantage but it didn't have an entry from its main franchise (Halo) until two years after the system launched."
Umm, basically everything released on the 360 during that first year was defacto exclusive.
"Some developers won't care but after criticizing the PS3, launching a major game on the system the week the online system goes offline how eager do you think companies like Valve are to put another game on the PS3? "
It doesn't matter how pissed they are, the bean counters are going to ask if they can make money publishing on the console. If they can, then the bean counters will insist that the developers put their game on it.
And do keep in mind that Sony develops their consoles based on a 10 year life span, and Blu-Ray is still an expanding market and technology. Having 7x the storage space, after all, is only useful if the game developers come up with things to do with. 3D movies and games is something the PS3 can support and it only came out recently.
Now if you want to talk about weird decisions, what about Microsoft offering an external HD-DVD player accessory for the Xbox?
... Not only do they pick a soon to be dead technology and fail to support high definition audio or address the loudness of their cooling fans, but there was no chance game developers were going to take advantage of a format that only a fraction of the base own.
A shame really, because one of the best parts of the PS3 is the toughness of the Blu Ray format. It's got a lot more layers of protection than a DVD disc and hence is a lot more durable and less likely to fail due to scratches. Even nasty looking used discs bought from gamestop clean right up with a microfiber.
