OP I've felt this way for a few years now. I'm very excited for what the PS4 has to offer, and I understand the reasons as to why they're doing what they're doing, but I do think that it's a huge shame that hardware is basically becoming standardized across the board.
We're losing out on a considerable amount of potential for unique, eccentric, distinct and more creative approaches to building games and hardware for the sake of standardization, efficiency, cross-platform and 3rd party friendliness, etc. Consoles feel far less distinct today than they did before, and bridging the gap between PC with home consoles in a way where both platforms overlap with genres and multiplat titles feels awfully redundant.
The only remaining beacon in this regard so far is Nintendo. For better or worse, they seem to be the only ones willing to really try comparatively left-field ideas. But even then, their approach seems to be more focused on shaking up how the player interacts with and controls games rather than really going a different route in terms of inner-parts and PC like structure. (Except for level of power I guess.)
