^Developers and gamers have different interests and values when it comes to measuring consoles' "potential" and "power".
As a gamer, I'm interested in the final result of that potential: I want to have great graphics and sound, lots of action on screen, credible and engaging AI, smooth network features, fast streaming and quick loading.
As a developer, I'm much more interested in the process: how easy it is to obtain a given target, how much will it cost me, how portable it will be to other platforms, how maintainable and reusable will be my code, how much know-how is needed by my coders and artists.
The fact that Epic, Valve, Crytek guys have been hard on the exotic architecture of the PS3 is hardly surprising. They are first and foremost interested in processes and tools and have a heavy PC-centric background.
But in the end if I measure a console's power as a gamer, shouldn't I measure it by what some developers were able to give me as a final product, and not by what some developers would have liked the process to be like?
When was the last time you went to see a great movie, but came out saying "yeah, that movie was great, but I heard it was really hard to get the authorization papers to film that scene on the Empire State Building"? Or when watching the Sistine Chapel "it's great, but I resent that Michelangelo almost ruined his health by working on it"? As long as it was made, as a spectator I'm happy with it.
