I'd just like to put in that I completely, wholeheartedly, agree with the OP. The PS3 is easier than the PS2 to develop for, without question.
And um... using DMAs isn't exactly rocket science. The PS3 is not really very hard to develop for, unless the place you learned to program taught everything in Java and C#. That's frightenly true in more circumstances than you may want to believe. The number of C++ programmers who even understand the fundamentals of compiler optimization is really really small.
The 360 has dev tools that cater fairly well to those types of programmers -- which is a good thing, considering. This fact is also the reason that writing a PS3 engine, and porting it to the 360, is a better plan than the opposite, if you're looking for high performance -- development schedules like to demand things way before they are ready, and the 360 makes it easy... almost too easy.. to get stuff working, without actually working well. Ironic, yes.
Therein lies the future of improving anything on the 360, down the road -- writing engines to work much like PS3-exclusive engines. Not joking. There's plenty of room for improvement, though, IMO.
