"This thing beats the Xbox 360 pretty well in most areas, except for available games. That will change in time though..."
Actually, I've heard that cross-platform games look the same on both consoles but are having framerate issues on the PS3. It's also been stated by the developers of "Assassin's Creed" that the Xbox 360 can handle better AI for the game than the PS3. Really, the PS3's power has been vastly overhyped.
When I hear people say, "Well, the reason you don't see a performance difference yet is that the games aren't made yet to take advantage of it." WHich is exactly why I can wait until the shortage ends before buying one.
It doesn't surprise me that cross-platform games would like similiar at this point in time. If that is true in 18 months, then the 360 will definitely have the advantage.
I'm always suspect of what developers say about platforms - you never know if they are acting as sock puppets for the manufacturers. lol
It always boils down to exclusives.
This will be the first generation where Sony can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft on a power level. I'm very interested to see how they will (try) to capitalize on that fact, and whether or not they can maintain enough devs to work only on their systems. In particular I'm paying close attention to Square-Enix, as one of its higher-ups has said in the past that exclusivity is becoming hard to swallow with the price of making games shooting through the roof. They've always placed their huge franchises on once console only.