And Behind Door #1? It's More RAM! (Applause)

Looks like the Playstation 3 is giving developers a gift: more RAM.
For those of you inexperienced in the world of modern console gaming, they actually have a lot more in common with PC's than you might think, as in: they have their own Operating Systems. Sony's PS3 had an OS guilty of more memory-hogging than any other OS around, eating up around 120MB of RAM for operation. Since the OS is always running in the background (just like Windows) and this RAM usage was spread across both the system and video ram, this was quite the inconvenience for developers that are always trying to squeeze out as much usable RAM as they can. This abundance in OS size is even more apparent when compared to the the Xbox 360's 32MB OS footprint. What? You mean someone makes an operating system even more bloated than one of Microsoft's? GASP!
The reason for this large initial footprint actually lies in the regular firmware updates the PS3 uses to add new features, and yes, that includes the beloved in-game XMB. With Sony have no definitive idea of what the memory requirements would be for the OS since they likewise had no definitive idea for the features of the OS, they essentially put a big "Reserved" sign on several chunks of RAM. The reason being that if player's asked for a new feature but the memory requirements were higher than what was currently allocated to the OS, it would be impossible to implement that feature as raising the ceiling on the Operating System's RAM allotment would break any game that utilized the newly confiscated memory.
As the PS3's life cycle went on, Sony was able to lock down a more efficient use of RAM and the OS footprint was cut down to 96MB. Even further down the road, bringing us to the present, the PS3's OS is down to a slim 50MB, giving an extra 70MB to developers. Before you go getting all excited over new games that will put Uncharted 2 to shame, know that this extra RAM isn't likely to have a very noticeable impact. Since OS memory was saved by making things like in-game music optional, what we'll likely see is more games implementing such features. That or slightly prettier textures or lighting. So this gift is more of a stocking stuffer than something you'd find wrapped under the tree, but it's still better than coal, right? Is it too late/early to be making Christmas analogies?