Well, imo MS is going the Sega way... as for being a console maker; early adopters style. Usually this means their, still impressive hardware, will be the weakest when all 3 consoles are in stores. DC was, compared to PS2, also very dev friendly ; now compare a DC game to MGS3 or GT4.....
Of course there\'s the big difference that MS has way better marketing strategies than Sega and some actual cash to back up the campaign.
Also, Nvidia has worked together for years with Sony on the Cell-to-gpu system and especially the development tools. Realtime graphics will grow more and more towards 3D apps like 3DsMax and Maya ; Nvidia is very very strong there with their Quadro cards and dcc OpenGL tools. Yes, they kinda crush ATi\'s FireGL\'s there. Thus Nvidia\'s expertise in that highpoly and visual FX workfield will benefit PS3 development.
Then there\'s Rambus\' XDR memory ; via PS3, Nvidia gets expierence creating a gpu design based on XDR memory. This is high speed bandwidth is probably mucho priority for Nvidia for their next gen pc gpu\'s as well. The anand tech article on Rambus XDR & Flexphase is interesting ; pretty much makes it probable for PS3 to be a console no bigger than PS2 and with good heat dissipation. Nvidia\'s next gen based videocards might not be as big and powerconsuming as current NV40\'s anymore thanks to Rambus\' innovations.
Rambus XDR & Flexphase article Ati, btw, has to do work for both Nintendo and MS. I can\'t see those 2 agreeing they have the same gpu. Since Ati already has their hands full on their own pc card production (Nvidia doesn\'t actually make videocards). So.... Ati has to make 2 different off the shelf gpu\'s for these consoles, basically different versions of their next pc card.
So, yeah I can easily see Nvidia providing topnotch effort to make PS3 a both powerfull and developer friendly console. Of course , I respect anyones\' opinion if they think Sony wants to have the developer whining of early PS2 games on repeat :rolleyes:
The only thing that could possibly hold PS3 back is the amount of Cell processors in PS3, due to costs. For it\'s potential it\'s gotta have at least 2 of those cores