I think one thing we should clarify is that MS are not the ones promoting the idea of "special sauce". We've seen faint references here and elsewhere to MS pr, or MS damage control; but to my knowledge, it's not MS making those claims, but leakers or interested parties interpreting or mis-interpreting information they've been given. This is regardless of whatever information or direction MS has given developers - no matter what one may think of MS (or Sony or any big corp) I'm not (yet) cynical enough to believe they would lie to devs about the performance parameters of their systems; so whatever info MS has given to third parties about what can be accomplished with the Xbox3, we have to assume it's given in good faith, and in practical terms without the need for hyperbole that would be reserved for the public. I think.
It also seems obvious that the specs we are getting are the specs that MS have been targeting for a long while now (since 2011, right?). They're not total fools; they would have known two things - that the level of power being targeted would not be comparable to a PC, and that their competitors could easily target more power, if they wanted to. So, I doubt that the helper additions to the system are afterthoughts, but rather, part of the overall planned designed (and having read through this thread, I"m in the camp of thinking that some posters have indeed twisted or misinterpreted statements made by some posters; jumping to conclusions that were never implied in the first place).
Anyway, we need to accept the fact that a 1.2TF system is what we are getting, and that there will indeed be another system that's simply more powerful - without any qualifiers of "they'll be comparable, etc., etc.". It is what it is. While there will be some parity between third party games, there may well be some third party games that simply look and run better on Orbis. I'm buying a Durango regardless, and eventually if not sooner I'll get an Orbis as well.
I still find it curious that, even after the big Durango summit, we didn't catch wind of any dev complaints about the seemingly low powered hardware (or did we?). My question to that is: why not? If devs were complaining about the ram disparity (and Sony finally upped their ram amounts as a result) between the two systems, and if, as brain_stew has claimed, the 1.8TF was the planned performance target for Sony all along, then why did we not hear equally vociferous complaints about the Durango gpu, as a means of attempting to pressure MS into upping the power?
