this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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The PS3 was pretty damned expensive for the time. I bought a MGS4 version, and I nearly returned it due to the expense. A few things made me keep it though: it was an excellent media player with lots of support for plugging in external drives full of media (and IIRC they regularly pushed new codecs out with system updates), wireless controllers and Burnout Paradise. I still play Burnout Paradise regularly. I never owned many Blu-ray movies, but it had that going for it too when most of the world was still using DVDs.
I don't think that anything that has followed the PS3 has been nearly as good of a device. I hardly ever use my PS5 now, and if most of my library weren't PlayStation-exclusive titles, I'd probably just sell the thing in favor of my Steam Deck.
At launch the PS3 was one of the cheapest Blu-ray players available.
It was the same with the PS2 and DVDs
This post doesn't include everything. There were a variety of hardware revisions and price cuts that you could add in. Plus the change of the price of games and accessories.
I waited until 2011 to get my PS3. It was $150 for a slim model, and I chose the Uncharted 3 bundle for $200. I think it ended up being a pretty good deal. You mentioned Blu-Ray and DVD, but it was also good for a lot of streaming services. The PS3 pre-dated the rise of smart TV's. I don't think there were even Android boxes back then- the NVIDIA Shield and Amazon Fire Stick were both released in 2014, and the Chromecast was 2013. Media PC's were a lot less common, and so were couch-friendly operating systems.
Unrelated- the Deck is amazing. With PS1 and PS2 it's really easy to rip your games on a PC and emulate them on the Deck. And with widescreen hacks, cheats, texture packs, save states, speed up, and slow down, plus the extra buttons to control it all, it's even better than original hardware. PS3 is doable too, though there's a lot more hoops to jump through and fewer emulation benefits. You can also use Chiaki to stream from your PS4/5, so it's pretty close to having the whole library in the palm of your hands.