this was around the time Sony was extremely arrogant and they told people to get a second job if they wanted a PS3

@Shawtymann

No it wasn't so much arrogance as it was around a time when the ps3 had an hdmi port, built in wifi, memory card slots, otheros/linux, a blu ray drive, a physical emotion ps2 chip not emulation, a non proprietary up-gradable hard drive compartment, bluetooth, web browser, printer support (wtf? lol), rechargeable controller and more.

the 360 had no wifi, no hdmi, proprietary and limited hd, a battery operated controller, cheap build quality, no built in large media disc drive and a pay wall, cheap headset (brilliant, reminded me of the socom packages from the ps2 days).

Oh it did have a power brick and a complimentary RROD for everyone.

I'll get a crap load of disagrees but I won't be proven wrong based on launch models.

Yet for some reason people wanted the two consoles to be evenly priced.

LOL bizarro world. They were arrogant in their presentation and justification but they were on top of that taking a $300 dollar loss on each console sold at $599.

You know what I did? Not complain, I laughed and waited for a price drop, did the same with the 360. Hell people do it with cars.

@Roah

I agree the PS3 had a tremendous value! I bought it at launch because of all the features it had. The problem was that even Sony knew that they were very unrealistic about the price (and the arrogant attitude didn't help at all).

The funny thing is that as you said, the Xbox was actually more expensive if you bought the necessary stuff to equal the PS3 in features (and you still didn't have the blurry with an Xbox), but something really weirder, is that the iPhone launched about that time at $599 too! and it flew off the shelves!.. So people didn't complain about an overpriced phone, but had a hard time buying an excellent gaming console with blurry and all the features it had.