It's normal to be more gentle with 6-year old current gen hardware having performance problems than with 1-month old next gen hardware having performance problems.

Did anyone really expect them to make it run smoother than the original? I remember it would get so choppy in some battles that I would have to take a break from the game on the 360 when it came out. Though at the time the graphics were awesome, so I forgave it. I would have a hard time going back though.

On the original 360 version it didn't get bad until the later half of the game. It would slow down to like 1/2 frames per second on some of the side quests planet missions when there were a lot of bad guys in that recycled building that was on almost every planet.

will pick it up next week or so....but does that mean I can now transfer over a play through of ME to ME2?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-mass-effect-PS3-face-off

It is the better version on PS3 apparently. So good news for those (like me) who wanted to get this.