I don't think anyone other than fanboys were defending the system. It had been made fun of pretty relentlessly for the boomerang controller and grill-inspired design, but the price was the real kicker. I remember a lot of people talking about how it was about as much money to buy the Wii and Xbox 360 instead of the PS3.

Blu Ray players were expensive as -blam!- back then, AND backwards compatibilty for two consoles. These two alone, along with the blu ray player, made it very expensive

That was the cheapest bluray player available at the time, or so I've heard. I still had vhs