@Mike B: It's pretty common hardware being "easy to code" at a stage, where optimization isn't really required. We'll see it later, if devs need to start work around hardware bottlenecks, how much easier it is. But it requires PS3 installbase grow big enough to justify the development that really pushes the hardware.

@Legend: What has gone into you? I've seen you lately being really rational.

Yes, I dislike Windows from a technical perspective, like for example Epic's lead developer stated WindowsXP / DirectX is so inefficient up to 50% of CPU cycles gets wasted, similar figures with regard to memory usage.

Still I bought WindowsXP because most software gets released first or don't get ported to alternatives at all. This strategy works well for Microsoft, but if Microsoft adopted open standards porting to rival alternatives wouldn't be much of an issue and would easily yield similar good results (More efficient OS design would actually give rivals an edge, although neither MacOS or Linux is really efficient as a desktop OS, efficient OS examples would include OSes like BeOS and QNX).

Developing code specifically for the Cell easily benefits any other multi-core or multi-CPU based platform, there are no issues with regard to code porting. The only difference is that you would be able to yeild much greater performance from the Cell in comparison to other currently common CPU architectures, it will not inhibit any performance potential on such alternatives (including Windows PCs, Macs or 360).

How does it easily benefit other platforms?  Are you saying that code first developed on the Cell and then ported over to the PC and 360 would run as well or better than if that code had been created on the PC and 360 for example from the ground up?  What I'm trying to get across to you is that if Sony has not been so arrogant and instead used a processor that was very similar to the PC and 360 then code could have been easily ported between the 3 and everyone benefits (especially publishers not having headaches and wasting time and money trying to work with platforms that are so different from each other).  Sony didn't have to go with the Cell, the fact that they chose it showed their complete disregard for programmers and third parties.

Yes, it will result in cleaner code, inefficiencies are easily spotted when developing for the Cell. The code running on the Xenon or x86 CPUs will however not outperform the Cell, due to the fact that the Cell provides more raw horse power. (218 GFlops for the PS3's Cell, compared to 77 GFlops for the Xenon, but there are other bottlenecks for the Xenon to take into account like shared L2 cache between cores, shared main memory bandwidth with the GPU with much worse latency (low latencies are crucial for getting the most out of CPUs) compared to the PS3's XDR Ram).

The PS3 nor any other rival platform will ever run Direct X, so there will always be porting issues for such software nomatter what Sony would have done while designing the PS3.

Some dev comments:

A multiplatform games developer posting at Beyond3D (admitted their initial games were just "quick & dirty ports from 360):

"We all agree given the time we'd like to architect for the SPU's first then work back... giving us cache-friendly algorithms by design "

Tomb Raider Underworld developer:

"Secondly, the matters of multithreading policies, the whole job queue architecture, encapsulation of jobs and their corresponding data packets, etc. that work on the PS3 are indeed more than applicable of the 360/PC. And as I've mentioned before, they work better than anything and everything that Microsoft recommends (so far without exception for us). The problems lie in the fact that that work is an absolute necessity on the PS3, whereas they're not entirely necessary on any other platform.""

Simple: I don't care... i just like to play games.

Like Grey Acumen. Basically, prove all these people wrong.

And also, because Nintendo is the only one which keeps making a console.
The two others are going in a stray way, making sth completely different, which would be interesting if it wasn't so full of problems : unfinished games patched later, microtransactions, bad user interface, ...
Yes, Nintendo has the best user interface, the most intuitive one. But I guess people that love XBox Live or XMB can never understand why.

Go intendo !

Domination...well for me it is somewhat important as I advocate a single gaming platform. I have a nintendo bias of course, so I would prefer Nintendo to be the standard. However any standard is better than going through the "console wars". Just like blu-ray and HD-DVD, yes you could have just bought both and enjoyed the best of both camps but somehow it is just better to have a single format.

Domination is important to me because I perfer it doesn't happen.

Healthy competition insures a better product. This has become even better with the Wii carving out a large percentage of the userbase because it's so different which means more console exclusives which means the games are going to have to be different as opposed to just having one game and then 10 clones of it.  Instead you have two original games with 5 clones of each.  (It's slightly better!)

Consoles being drastically different combined with healthy competition is a dream to someone who wants to be a multi-console owner if you ask me. I hope that either 360 or PS3 pull off something that drastically sets them apart from the oldschool gaming console as well next generation.

I care, I don't want another $600 console, the same goes for devkits and user-friendly apis...

BTW I looked for the whole post of Mikeb from TR devs (He post the same in another forums, lol)... interesting parts remarked...

Secondly, the matters of multithreading policies, the whole job queue architecture, encapsulation of jobs and their corresponding data packets, etc. that work on the PS3 are indeed more than applicable of the 360/PC.

And as I've mentioned before, they work better than anything and everything that Microsoft recommends (so far without exception for us).

The problems lie in the fact that that work is an absolute necessity on the PS3, whereas they're not entirely necessary on any other platform.

Even if it does pay off on other platforms, the difference may not be large enough to justify completely tearing apart every platform's codebase.

That's the fundamental source of all PS3 development problems.