Sony looks to be decreasing PS3 production: http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16288
I wouldn't say that. I'd say, "they don't provide as much general purpose CPU power as Micorsoft did with the 360, so that's going to cost them in the future." Attempting to overreach with technology is not "ahead of the times." As auroragb pointed out, the mistakes made were overengineering / compensating for promises made. However -- marketing didn't set the parameters, Krazy Ken Kutagari did. He was the lead engineer and the guy who wouldn't shut up about how it would be able to drive 2 1080p displays at 1080p, etc etc. He either vastly overestimated the power of the cell or certain things turned out to be infeasible he previously assumed were feasible.
One thing is clear, however, and it is that the Cell is much less well suited toward gaming than Sony would like. The reason it has so little general purpose power is because it was originally supposed to include two PPC970 cores with SMT instead of one with SMT. That would have made it far more comperable to the Xbox 360 (which has 3 such cores) and it would have the additional advantage of the SPEs. While the SPEs have more limited uses in gaming, the cell would make a very interesting processor with 2x the general purpose power as it has now.
