Definitely more than most can afford. But do remember it can also play blu-ray discs so is cheaper than any current stand alone HD player! When looking at it from that perspective it is cheap.
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That's what I always told people, the PS3 is the cheapest blu-ray player available, and it can do a lot more.
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Wait ... do notice that I'm talking of 435 euro, not 435 GBP. But then, you probably already know
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And having worked out that's about £300, I was about to go on about how we're being ripped off in the UK paying ~£425 until I realised that Game throw in 3 games worth £30 each and a Sixaxis worth £35 which makes it £300 here too. Starting to look tempting...
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£300 is a very good price and is about the same as the PS2 started off costing, so not an outrageous amount.
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When I got my first PS2 I paid a total of £350, for the console and three games. It didnt include an extra controller (£20) or a memory card (£29.99) or even the cable I needed for my TV (It didn't have a scart socket)... So in all I spent over £400 on my first PS2... Which makes my PS3 purchase quite comparible in price and actually not at all bad value for money (60gb vs 8mb storage...)

In the end though, it is all horses for courses and there will only be one winner...

...US!!!
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Definitely. Could even be seen as a real bargain, if it not for the fact most also need to add in the cost of an HDTV to get the most from it...
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I paid the full price for the PS2 as well, right after the launch. I remember it was around the equivalent of € 550, without extra controller, no games, and with a crappy AV-cable. I'm sure people back then were also complaining about the price and the lack of quality games; just look at what the PS2 has become now
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I remember the PS2 in the early days and there were loads of people complaining. They didn't like how big the PS2 was, they thought it was too expensive, the complained that the games came in bigger DVD style boxes instead of the CD sized cases of the original PSX, and the maddest thing I remember was how everyone was complaining about the lack of in-game anti-aliasing. Who else remembers that? On GameFAQs and other sites at the time that was all the kiddies were arguing about. We now know it can do such effects perfectly well. It just required good developers!

And in a similar way to the PS3, when the PS2 was new DVD drives were expensive and people saw the PS2 as a cheap DVD player. Very similar.
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I too paid quite a lot for the PS2 at it's launch back in the day. If I recall correctly, it launched for kr3,990, which is £350-£360. And that was with one controller, no games and no memory card. I remember I got a memory card, Timesplitters and SSX with it, so it it did cost a great deal in the end as well.

True that. I was going to get a HDTV sometime soon anyway, but it's no coincidence that I went down and got one just after getting the PS3. That TV was £2.000. On top of that, it didn't take long that I decided I needed a new reciever, as the one I had was getting pretty old. It couldn't play back DTS signals, and that just wouldn't do. So went down and got a new one for around £300. Which it turns out won't play back the uncompressed PCM signal on the Blu-ray movies through the optical input, you have to use some special component input to get it which isn't that easy to do from the PS3. So I'm going to take that back once the next model that actually can play that back from the optical is released next month.

It also didn't take long before I got a 200GB HD for it as well. That was a little less than £100 when I got it (and plummeted in price soon after ). Add those two games I got with the PS3 then you could say I've spent over £3.000 as a direct result of getting a PS3 so far.

But who's counting?
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