PS3 is whatever Sony choose it to be. It's not designed to
your specification. If in their design for their product, they choose to have 416 MBs for games to run concurrently with 96 MBs for other stuff like PVR and broadcasting movies over the wireless network to PSPs, that's their choice to make. The box itself is a Media Entertainment Hyperplex (TM
), and not 'a games console'. We know that from the way Sony have designed it, talked about it, enabled non-gaming features, are adding more non-gaming features, and so forth. If most people buy it jsut for the games, that's their choice, but that doesn't change the nature of the machine.
Or calling on an analogy, if 95% of people who buy a Honda Civic do so just to sit inside and listen to the CD player, does that make it a HiFi instead of a car? If 95% of people who buy an iPod use it for jamming doors open, does that make the iPod a doorstop instead of a music player?
The people who design the hardware don't choose what people do with it, but they do design it to perform a set function (or functions) which defines what the hardware is. PS3 is designed to do lots of multimedia activities. It is not designed to play games, on which some people shoe-horn in some extra functions.
I'm against 96 MBs being reserved because
it's going to waste. If it was being used for entertainment functions, then that's appropriate. It's not
just about the games (quite the opposite of Nintendo!). If you dont like that idea, don't buy a PS3.