The only people who care about winning in the polls are those who are hosting the polls and the article/forum piece. The point of the poll is to attract attention and get hits to your website or forum post. Nothing else matters.
The industry only cares about sales like a slimy used car salesman. Sure they have all the platforms and tools necessary to support your "purchase," but after that "purchase" they could care less unless it involves a monthly payment like an extended dealer warranty or Xbox Live membership.
As for the PS3 vs. 360, it goes a lot deeper than Sony selling more consoles with the PS1 and PS2 than Nintendo has with the NES, SNES, N64 and GC combined. Outside of video games, Sony is highly regarded in the US and every other country as the pinnacle of quality in home electronic devices from televisions, to Sony BMG, on down to the latest numbered Playstation. Thus forth, when the word "quality" appears in a poll against either Nintendo or Microsoft, Sony wins due to their hard work in other products.
Microsoft, rightly or wrongly, is still viewed as the monopoly who wants to low ball all their competitors by using their size to get unfair advantages. Linux is a clearly superior OS than any version of Windows, but it has never caught on because of Microsoft's deals with computer makers such as Dell to frontload every single one of their computers for retail with the latest Windows and trial editions of Microsoft Office.
Rightfully, Microsoft and the Xbox brand have taken a hit for this legacy of anticompetitive business practices. Wrongfully are those who ascribe the Xbox as a low quality piece of hardware.
Yes, the Xbox 360 may be inferior in hardware to the PS3. That being said, we don't play from inside the box, we play from the outside. Xbox Live being a vastly superior, fully integrated platform compared to PSN is one of the reasons why my friends with PS3s still play all the latest CoD and FPS on their 360 and not their PS3. It has nothing to do with the sunk cost of the Gold Membership, it has everything to do with a fully integrated, easy to use interface.
