This debate is still being debated? I thought it was understood that: a typical PC bought from a typical retail store generally under performs a platform gaming console. At least within the first year of a new platforms release.
It’s all about processing power! The PS3 has a 550GHZ core clock speed with 700MHZ GDDR3 RAM - and that is better than the average specs of your mid-range tower PC out of the box at Best Buy. The PS3 is about a year older now and the PC videocard market is well beyond those specs! Just shopping around you can go out right now and buy a beautiful new 384 bit, 575 MHZ GPU, with 700MB of memory for about 400-500 bucks! Not cheap! and after you spend all that money you still need to spend another $1000 on the system that can utilize all that video power!
Typically a pc with comparable hardware to the PS3 will under perform in gaming. Simply because of the OS overhead. Your PS3 is optimized for a great gaming experience with minimal tweaking needed (or/and available). The average pc gamer has many options to tweak his gaming experience; adding more system RAM, overclocking memory-GPU-CPU, turning up or down graphic detail, anti aliasing etc. and my favorite thing about PC gaming is the ability to download endless MODS and add-ons!
The playstation is priced pretty well for the hardware that its got. The same performance with a stand alone Video card would cost more and would only get you 1/5 of the needed equipment to actually play a game. And lets not forget the BLU-RAY disc player it has that you can hardly find on the market for less than $350.
Bottom line is, for the money that extreme gaming costs, the PS3 is still the best gaming experience your going to get outside a $2500 PC power-tower. I feel the same about the Wii, it’s a little less powerful but delivers a great experience without the burden on the wallet. And even if you can afford the best gaming pc it isn’t going to be as error free as the typical console game - because Windows is likely to throw some error at you along the way. The MAC is likely to produce better gaming results than PC but the price tag there is even more astronomical!