I'm just looking at L4D as an example...the graphics are good, but it's not earth shattering,....it's the content.  In looking at Gears franchise, it was the tweaks in gameplay that made that such an awesome gaming experience.  The combat action was much more grounded and rooted in movement and cover, vice "hopping" for example.  The graphical boost were important, but gameplay was far more important...

@Procastinato: So now most engine programmers are newbs? That's like the "developers are lazy" argument, it completely ignores one of the most important matters of game development - cost. Time equals money, the Cell equals more invested time in engine programming, which equals more money spent.

It's not that developers are lazy or stupid, it's that they have limited time and budget. Sony needs to learn that lesson and make developer-friendly consoles.

What I don't understand is why if the PS3 is so much more powerful, we haven't seen any evidence of it. Yeah it's got some great looking exclusives but nothing that really trounces say Gears 2 or even multi plat games like Resi 5. And the upcoming Lost Planet 2 looks gorgeous. If the PS3 is so much more powerful, than the 'technically inferior' 360 is really giving it a real good run for it's money. I don't ever remember a console war were the power of the consoles was up for so much (legit) debate. Used to be so clear in the past. SNES>Mega Drive. N64>PSOne. Xbox>PS2.

while i pretty much agree with what you stated..the Cell processor is indeed a CPU/GPU combo chip.

and yea it is not meant to replace a dedicated GPU for the most part. except now the smaller nm scale CPU/GPU combo chip's do provide the didicated GPU finction in Mobile devices, that would require such low power processor's with the graphic's use ability to replace dedicated GPU's that would otherwise offset the advantages of the CPU/GPU chip's provide like you stated in power /watt and transister count.

but here is DR. Hofstee has stated this here is the PDF

lanl.gov/orgs/hpc/roadrunner/rrinfo/RR%20webPDFs/Cell_Hofstee_Non_Conf.pdf

and how AMD and Intel and Ati are also heading in that same direction.

Kids like game programming -- meaning fresh outta college.  They come cheap, too.  Enthusiasm goes a long way toward reducing the paycheck, because inevitably there's going to be someone crazy enough, and just skilled enough (and no family, etc.) who will take the job for the price.  The games industry is also really stressful, because of the budget/deadline thing... 50-60 hour workweeks are commonplace, and people don't tend to last long under those conditions.

Sony has a truckload of badass developers under their hood, so I can see how it may have made sense to them, but I would tend to agree with you, in that, in this day and age, which is really just before the "age of parallelism" really hits mainstream, the Xenon's ease-of-use makes it much more attractive from a budget standpoint.  The PS3 is lucky that its specs are so close to the 360, and ports are easy, IMO.

Honestly, most devs don't hardly use the entire Xenon either... another advantage for the PS3 for easy ports, actually.  Using the Cell, or all three cores of the Xenon, to maximum potential isn't necessary for a great game.  Lots of middleware already uses it (although its taken some time), and the extra Xenon cores, so in a sense, its becoming easier to wield that horsepower than it used to be (and it shows in recent 3rd party games).

At the beginning of the generation, the 360 had not only a year head start, but this ease-of-use advantage, which has resulted in the current situation.  So yeah, I think Sony may have jumped the gun with the Cell.

In the next generation, however, using the Cell in this gen may have turned out to be a huge boon -- parallelism is the way of the future, whether devs want to embrace it or not.  Sony is already there, despite the fact that it has cost them dearly.  If they can hold on, they may very well have set themselves up for some serious advantages in the future.

Cost.  That's the answer.  Pretty critical issue that's not going to go away any time soon, for most publishers/devs.  It will eventually get better though, because parallelism will work its way into the mainstream programmer's brain, eventually.

it's not like that, yes more time does mean more money..but also it mean's you as a developer will not be prepaired for the next trend in Microprocessor's..like the Cell processor..if you look at the way the New processor's from Intel,Ati,Nvidia and Amd, IBM, STI they are all producing

CPU/GPU combo chip's it's learn it now or later ..that's the developer's choice, some are learning it now

you are 100% right, it is mainly cost because many developer's are just learning this type of processor design "that is to design game's with this type of processor in mind" the thing is You are right it will not go away for anytime soon, but developer's that have embraced it will be better prepaired for net generation, because these combo chip's are what's going into computer's, electronic's mobile phone's. etc.

I don't deny that multi-core will become more and more prevalent, but which if Sony's games use all of the Cell's cores? Last I heard KZ2 uses 4 SPEs, and even then quite sparsely (a lot of idle time on those 4). It was on some presentation slide by Guerilla, unfortunately I can't find it right now.

EDIT - Found it:

Sony is way ahead of the parallel programming paradigm. Intel and M$ are in the middle of creating development tools to ease the burden of the paradigm. Without tools to help with the development, just throwing more cores won't solve anything.