[015a]

This was also kind of the case with the PS3. Its sales weren't fantastic at release, partially because of its... $600 (?) price tag. But even at that price, at its release, it was one of the cheapest ways to get a Blu-ray player, and many people bought it for that.

[genewitch]

Not just a Blu-ray player, but one that is guaranteed to be able to play practically all blu-ray discs as long as Blu ray discs are made or the console hardware fails.

Sony pushed updates to the firmware. Most commodity Blu ray players don't have an (easy) way to update.

[to11mtm]

"Five Hundred Ninety Nine US Dollars!"

But for both the PS2 and PS3, Getting folks to adopt the new formats was definitely a factor.

In the case of the PS2, I think less so; It wasn't the cheapest way to get a DVD player, but IIRC it wasn't that much more than a DVD Player with Component out at the time (note; All PS2s can do Component out, but only later models can play DVDs at 480p) and that made it a lot easier for families to buy-in.

[sp332]

A lot of early Blu-ray players had terrible load times. Long enough to be pretty annoying. The PS3 had the CPU horsepower to play discs quickly.

[Forgeties79]

If memory serves, there was less than 1 game per PS3 sold at launch.