Worth $600? Sure
Needed to play video games? Not at all. The USB ports, Micro card slots, RSX GPU, HDMI and backwards compatiblity were great bonuses for it, but for people who play video games, Sony really struggled to market it in a way that would make people actually see the result of the RSX GPU.

Its also worth keeping in mind that the PS3 that was backwards compatible FULLY is only the base 20GB launch PS3, which had no Wi-Fi and no flash card reader.
As much as the Blu-ray and graphical synthesizer were COOL and they were unique, it for a lot of people, wasn't worth being $600 even IF the entire package was worth it for all the features it did have.
People wanted a console.