http://news.cnet.com/sony-ps3-is-hard-to-develop-for-on-purpose/

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that (developers) want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Kaz Hirai.

I am very happy that Sony has decided to drop ole Kaz's philosophy.  It made no sense whatsoever and probably pissed a lot of developers off every day when they went in to work.

I imagine that Sony will have a modified version of the cell going next time with a shit-ton of ram.  Instead of having 8 cores or more they will probably drop it down to 3 or 4 and have those cores more robust.  (Similar to what the 360 does now, only with updated everything).  Probably will have the GPU and CPU on the same die as well.  Fewer cores = easier programming = devs happier= better games.  

Nothing but win win.

Not true. The lessons are already learned and the tools to develop on a CELL based architecture have already been created so a PS4 with CELL wouldn't have the learning curve that the PS3 had.

so not a CELL then? the CELL has only one true "core" and 7 co-processors. A power 7 passed CPU is far more likely TBH, by the time the PS4 comes out it should be refined and die shrunk enough to be viable. 

do you mean learned?

no learnt, maybe you should learn English before being a gramma Nazi, lol.

learntpast participle, past tense of learn (Verb)

Huh where does it say there's no Cell?

If anything having the Cell in the PS4 would be a very smart move, since all the developers are so use to working on it now it'll be very easy for them to makes games in a few years time for the PS4.

familiarity=/= ease of use

that said they may gut be working on a better dev kit and APIs to make the development easier while keeping the complex CELL. That would mean developers wouldn't have to directly program the CELL but would probably lower potential performance, but the trade off would undoubtedly lead to the majority of the games running better.

Wasn't the PS2 a developer nightmare to code for, but that just hepled it separate the men from the mice and the system ended up having great games.

To be fare, back then, the PS2's competition was not as aggressive like the current gens. So once everyone started buying more PS2s, then the complaining dropped and more games came along. 

it was still easier than the PS3 is from what I have read. And the GCN wasn't much better, the xbox with it's directx support would have been the easiest, the fact that the PS2 was the weakest of the 3 didn't help. But given the market share that the PS2 commanded, devs had little choice but to develop for the PS2, so most ended up being very proficient.