I find it odd to ask if a 5 year old console is "still worth it" on a site dedicated to old games that never lose their luster. Of course the PS3 is still worth it if you want to play PS3 exclusive games, why wouldn't it be?

Unless you mean because of the PSN issues, but that's not how I read your original post. In any case I haven't bought a PS3 yet but might someday. I am mostly a PC gamer but I did buy a PS1 and PS2 eventually for some exclusives. I doubt a PS4 announcement in the next couple years would change my mind.

This while both are great pieces of technology the PS3 has 256MB of ram!(its graphics have another 256 but its seperate)
The Xbox has 512MB of shared RAM which designers can allocate as needed.
RAM is a major bottle neck

That and 6 gigs on a DvD from microsoft.

That isn't as much of a bottlenect as people think. Since the release of a hack for the PS3 the true size of games on the PS3 has been readable and it's on average (if you take out the outliers) 5GB, oh there are some games that use more FF13 uses a crap load most of which is the 1080p cutscenes, MGS has the same data repeated in 5 or 6 places on the disk due to high seek times on Bray drives. Really the main exceptions are those with long cutscenes and first party games.
When the 360 was released the memory was the second most expensive part :P
Infact they asked games designers which they'd rather have memory or a guarenteed HDD the devs asked for the memory.

You can't add to a system halfway through it's cycle, most games released for them now rely on full knowledge of the underlying hardware if you went in now and added say a processor 100MHz faster you'd mess up the timings in many games (hence why theres hardware limiters in the new APU) adding memory would do the same kind of thing.

GDDR3 was running at about $150 per 512MB in 2005 btw GDDR3 was neither slow or cheap at the time.

Wait I just saw you mentioned profits.. You do know that both the Xbox and PS3 were released at a loss right? The Xbox at release required an attach rate of 3.5 games per console sold the PS3 is estimated to have been running at 6 or 7 games (Sony refuse to give their required attach rates) Infact it was 2008 before the Xbox sold at a profit the PS3 took until september last year.

6gb? I think you'll find it's closer to 8.6gb as they're dual layer disks. Also Microsoft have recently announced a new disk with more space and a newer protection system that's coming out soon. Also as mentioned before, whilst blurays have more space, they spin a fair bit slower which is why most PS3 games have a mandatory install (usually for things like high FPS FMV's using ingame assets etc.)

Even on a modern graphics card GDDR is the second most expensive part its now $15-30 per 512

Thats in numbers over 10k per order to 1k per order (roughly) it IS discounted

I think you'll find... that they only have about 6-7gb because of said partition. that's why when you install games to your hard drive they always take up around 6gb, the only thing microsoft are changing as far as I am aware is the partition size. When you consider The Witcher on steam is nearing 15gb. Compression and cutbacks are still going to be made.

EDIT: Correction, an xbox disc atm can hold 6.8gb, the maximum allocation for their dual layered DvD's is 7.95

Which is exactly what I meant the reason that i put a range value there not an absolute is that the price changes depending on your order size the lower band is in the 10k+ chips ordered

If you like rpg's and jrpgs.... Ps3 is 4 u

Thats the only reason i brought one tbh

Better off getting a PS2 then though. Or even a PSP. The J-RPGS of this gen have been few and far between on the big 3 consoles with the only real standouts I can think of being Tales of Vesperia, Valkyria Chronicles and Lost Odyssey. Western RPGS have fared a little better with Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Oblivion and (somewhat arguably) Fallout but the rest have been enjoyable but fairly forgettable or flawed.

You forgot hyperdimension neptunia :P

But yeah there is a load of great rpg's on the PS2 like steambot chronicles.

Wait, you think Microsoft is designing the new Xbox from the chips on up? You give them too much credit. They are doing exactly what they did with the prior two Xboxes; start with a prototype made from off the shelf parts on which they work out the the interface and the base capabilities of the console, then customize that hardware as needed, using the hardware vendors to do all the design work for them. The original 360 prototype was basically a PowerPC desktop with a Radeon X1900, running the Xbox interface as an OS. MS didn't have anything to do with design or development on the final console's custom processor, they just used the advancements that resulted from IBM and Sony working together to create the Cell processor for the PS3. Basically they had already built their PowerPC-based prototype and then went to IBM and said "We need something faster, what do ya got in the back room?", so IBM designed and made a PPC processor with a modified version of the Cell's Power Processor Element (yes that's right, the PS3 and Xbox 360 basically run on the same technology). The same is true of its graphics, as the custom graphics card in the final 360 is basically just an early version of what would become the Radeon HD2000 series less than a year later. I am certain that MS is following exactly the same development path with this new console, which means they are easily at or beyond the "off the shelf parts" prototype phase.