Quickfire

@10: Yes, they do have access to developers who know how to optimise for the PS3... they're called "developer support", and collectively they're about as intelligent a bunch of guys you're ever going to meet.

Load times are a serious issue on the PS3, and one that isn't going to go away. Caching to the HDD is just that - caching. There is only a certain amount of space that can be reserved for caching on the HDD, and to get it there it still has to, at some point, load it via the very drive that is the bottleneck to begin with.

As soon as games with large, open environments and gameplay (a la GTA, Oblivion, etc) start appearing on PS3, you will start hearing problems as devs try to get the data off the disc faster... one solution is to load less data, but this means lower resolution textures... oh dear.

I've heard that Sony aren't even giving the hard sales figures to their staff re the US launch. They say proudly "we shipped 100000 to Japan, we sold 100000 in Japan - we sold out in Japan", but then for the US launch they just say "we sold out in the States".

How can a company be trusted when they push such vagaries on the people that are supposed to be making the system happen? If they won't proudly show off the numbers to their own staff, do you really think they managed anywhere near the numbers they promised??

How was the flash plugin? I've been hearing rumours that it isn't really up to much, speed-wise...

Fairly easy to beat Xbox controller's battery life when you have no rumble.

The PS3 will allow the user to switch it on and off through the controller (by holding down the PS button), yes.

Not to nitpick, but the price of the Xbox 360 Core in the UK is £209, not £219...

This is also why full BC is far more likely in the next iteration of the Xbox platform - the problems this time were down mainly to the change in base architecture (x86 -> PPC) and incompatibilities between the licensing of the nVidia chipset and the ATI Xenos chipset.

And this is where Babylon 5: Into the Fire would have been a good starting point had it not been canned. Real newtonian near-earth and deep space physics (3 laws), inertia, etc would have made a good base for a simpler mod (if required). Ah well, at least there is I've Found Her...