This was by design to grab market share and it worked brilliantly. They knew it would RRoD.
At the end the sales were about the same, but MS had done this in only two of the three markets - US and Euro, while Sony had the benefit of Japan, who will buy it no matter what.
In the end, Sony lost half its market share.
Yeah it worked brilliantly until the complaints came in , which at first they denied , until they had 1/3rd of the systems fail and they were forced to admit the obvious and pay over $1 billion dollars not so brilliant that all the profits you made you have to give back
Sony finally got someone who could give them a run for their money however from the looks of it Microsoft might be losing a lot of people just based on the used game issues , every Xbox owner I talked to said they wouldn't buy another based on that , never mind the extra $100
I think most PS3 owers will buy a PS4 , but I think a lot of Microsoft people may jump ship like Sony owners did , the only real advantage Xbox has is Live and Sony is catching up with that and it's for free