DMC4 is built on the PC not the PS3 (so both the consoles are getting a port)

Yeah I do recall that interview where they said in the end the game is made on a PC and then ported to the consoles but I think dmc4 has been in the development for the PS3 longer though I could be wrong.  In the end again it really doesn't matter much as both games according to capcom are identical.

If two die-sizes are similar using the same process than they (tend to) have a similar number of transistors ...
As a general guideline the performance per cycle is directly related to the number of transistors ...
So, having a similar number of transistors at a similar clock speed means that you should have similar performance ...

There is NO magic!

If you developed a single core CISC processor (based on the same core as the XBox 360/PS3/Wii) with advanced instructions to handle 3D geometry and physics so that the processor was similar in the number of transistors (to the PS3/XBox 360 cpu), and ran this processor at the same clock speed (to the PS3/XBox 360 cpu) you would see similar performance ...

What you have are trade-offs ... The single core system I describe could potentially be more powerful in game applications, while the XBox 360 processor is more powerful in general use, whereas the Cell (like a DSP) can be powerful in both situations but loses ease of development.

I think the PS3 has more theoretical power but its so bloody hard to tap that we will only ever see the power come out in very very few games - MGS4 and FFXIII for example.
No cross platform game will ever show a huge difference between the PS3 and the 360 as it simply will not be worth the cost to a developer to properly optimize it for the PS3.

Maybe five games in the entire generation will show that the PS3 is more powerful than the 360, otherwise they will spend the entire generation being same same.

At this point in the game, does it even matter which one is more powerful? Both are comparable. The SNES was more powerful than the Genesis, but if both systems had a version of Mortal Kombat II, everyone was happy. All that's important right now, are the exclusive titles. One thing I learned by playing the Wii, is that prettier doesn't exactly mean better. Depending on who you follow, the weakest system has had the year's best game, two years in a row!!

I think the PS3 is a little more powerful, but not by a whole lot. 15-20% perhaps. Anyways; that small difference will be very visible and audible throughout this year and the next.

I don't really care about processing speeds. I want to see results. Why I do think Uncharted is the best console game Ive played, it is still open.

Kinda reminds me of the GC/PS2 debates. (PS2 was stronger!)

"Again would you really be surprise if the PS3 was more powerful?"

Since both systems have opened their specs it is pretty easy to say which is more powerful.

The 360 has a graphics card that has some nice tricks up its sleeve although in normal situations it is not that much more impressive than the PS3 one.

The 360 has unified memory which seems to make developing somewhat easier. Also its OS is a bit smaller so it has slightly more memory.

If you want to program in normal threads the 360 is easier to develop for since you can use the CPU as a standard 3-core CPU a model many developers and dev tools are comfortable with.

The 360 has faster data access, data transfer rate from their DVD player

The PS3 has faster memory an on-die memory controller and can push data faster through the system.

The PS3 Cell is much, much more powerful if specifically programmed for. if physics, ai, etc. do no use all SPEs the architecture is flexible enough to use Cell SPEs for advanced shading

The PS3 has up to 5-times more space on the BluRay disc.

The PS3 always has a HD disc on which developers can depend.

So in the end both have some advantages: If you program single-threaded both are almost the same. The 360 has some advantages that make it easier to program and it has proven that games that are programmed for it are better than the PS3 port.

When developers start to press the last performance drops out of the system the PS3 has more room for improvement. Much more storage and the awesome Cell processor (which destroys any Intel CPU for some tasks that are suited to it) and an open architecture.

On paper the PS3 has a big edge for some pre-rendering tasks due to the SPEs, the 360 for general multi-threaded code due to the 3 general purpose cores. Other, smaller differences exist as well.

The questions for me are:

1. How much further can the 360 hardware be reasonably (in a cost-effective manner) pushed? It's only 2 years old... the PS2 was still being pushed for years after its initial release.

2. How much further can the PS3 hardware be reasonably pushed? It's fairly new, fairly groundbreaking in some ways, but SPEs are not general purpose and require a lot of blood and sweat to really squeeze hard. Blu-ray may provide some interesting capabilities due to raw capacity.

3. How long will the platforms remain dominant, i.e. - before their vendors bring out next-gen replacements? I shake my head in wonder when I hear that Sony wants the PS3 to be their dominant console for 10 years. Considering the rate of advancement in the industry, 10 years might produce some really increadible hardware advances. My guess is that Sony will release a PS4 at around the 5th birthday of the PS3. If MS comes out with a next-gen console in 3-4 years that's has a fair amount of BC with the 360, Sony will have no choice.

One thing I find funny is someone saying this exclusive looks better then your exclusive and it wouldn't be possible to do it on your platform yet time and time again some of those same games get ported later. Also how do you know a game that was only made on a certain platform could not possibly be made on another without even trying? Do developers go look at those 3 cores no way it can compete with 5 or look there is no way you can make this game without unified memory etc. Until those developers actually do some work on both systems I feel their opinions are irrelevant. Bottomline both systems are powerful with the strenghts and weaknesses so is up to the developers to get the games to work on whichever the best way they can.