Not gonna quote the whole message cos maybe best to have a fresh start eh mate? :) but from what I remember the original Xbox and the Gamecube launched almost the same time as each other and the first Xbox had a bit more power up it's sleaves than the GC but saying that, both of those were leaps and bounds ahead of the power inside the PS2 just.... it had already sunk it's teeth into so many people both for being the first of the generation out the gate and for most people being the first DVD player they owned so it was hard for people to get over this.
As for third parties, you see that all the time still most of the time it's just because of them making bloody games for the lowest common denomonator, if you see a game being made like the WWE games which come on Xbox360/PS3/wii/psp like.... if you've played those things I mean the smackdown VS Raws I've not had the bad luck to play wwe12 yet but yeah those games are pretty much all based on the PSP versions which is appaling to see on a big HD console. It's simply a case of if a first party is making a game for just it's console they can absolutely use all the unique graphical and gameplay tricks that system has to offer... whereas with third party things, they can't utilize the unique good points of a system and instead they have to bend and twist the game to adhear to the weakest aspects of each system it's going to be ported to.