It's not a mystery that the PS3 is a bit more powerful and complex than its rival, the Xbox 360. However, as slight as the differences between the two consoles (speaking of gameplay and visual quality here) may be, the task of developing games for one of the two is apparently much harder than with the other. Can you guess which for which one it's more difficult?

For the PS3, naturally, although "nobody wants to touch this issue right now" - one anonymous publisher who works on high-profile ports for both the PS3 and Xbox 360, stated, as GamePro reports. The source, of course, declined to make further comments on the issue, as you'd have guessed from the concise statement above.

However, the same site points out a report by Dr. Dobb's long-running software journal, that confirms the fact that the PS3 is... well, a pain in the butt, when it comes to developing games for it, and feeding that precious Cell processor that it has.

Thus, when comparing next-gen architectures, it was revealed that Cell development can be more costly than Xbox 360 development, as Microsoft's system is more PC-like inside. Well, it was made by Microsoft... "It's difficult to program for," say the authors when speaking of the PS3. "Software that exploits the Cell's potential requires a development effort significantly greater than traditional platforms."

More details! We want more details, we knew that already!

As time is money for everyone, you can see why developing teams aren't exactly competing over some space with the PS3's lineup of titles. Plus, more and more PlayStation exclusives have gone muliplatform.

And since one benchmark showed Cell performance to be 22 times higher than a comparable Intel chip, you'll soon have the answer to why the damn machine costs so much: "Since PS3's Cell processor allows more features -- better physics, more complex graphical processing, lighting or sound -- there is inevitably going to be more cost in supporting those extra features," Sony officials said. "It's not that PS3 is harder to write for, it's just that you can do more with it. If a game starts life on PS3, then man-hours per feature or costs related to asset production are comparable with industry norms."

The situation is slightly different when it comes to ported games, but you've got the idea, I'm sure. So, who do you think will be brave enough to start tapping that Cell processor on a regular basis. Someone will have to break the ice. Maybe then will we see some more titles.