I always wonder about Sony's strategy.
The launch price was a joke and definitely hubris there. That said, built-in hdd, wifi, rechargeable controllers, blu-ray, and hdmi were freakin awesome to have. I get an xbox later and there's a crappy 20gb hdd, controller with AA bats, no wifi, dvd only, and no hdmi.
That lead was significant, but I do agree if the PS3 had more a dev-friendly design and was cheaper, it would've killed the 360 instead of being in a race now.
Will Sony learn? No. They have a history of developing their own proprietary bs. It used to work, but the more time devs spend on figuring out how your device works, the less time they are developing games. I also apply this to game engines. Wow did SE waste a lot of time this gen...maybe had they used unreal or cry engine, they could've gotten something out sooner with 'hd towns!'