Two years into the PS3 and the system seems to have finally gotten some respect from publishers and, surprisingly, from gamers as well. It’s been grudging respect, to be sure, but the system has seen some excellent titles launch this fall, including competitive cross-platform ones. The Trophy situation has improved markedly since the capability was added this summer — EA has basically written the book on how to patch them in with Burnout Paradise, Mercenaries 2, and Battlefield: Bad Company all getting them post-launch — and the in-game XMB support for text messaging is likely as far as Sony will go in trying to match up against XBox Live. The rest of the system’s media features continue to grow and the PlayStation Store revamp and the launch of the movie store including both the game and movie stores being available on the PS3 and PSP have all been impressive accomplishments this year.

It’s also worth noting that some things the PS3 has are being mimicked by the revamped Xbox 360 dashboard. I’m talking about the way the XMB organizes content in vertical segments on a horizontal bar, and while hard drive installs were being used to minimize the relatively slow speed of the Blu-ray drive compared to a conventional DVD drive, the hard drive install on the 360 is reaching in that direction. To be sure Microsoft continues to innovate around their developers instead of leaving things in their hands — any game can be installed to the hard drive if I’m not mistaken, just as all games benefit from the Microsoft-funded voice chat servers and messaging system that cross all titles. Reliance on the developer is something Sony continues to stick with, mostly for worse, requiring them to do their own voice chat, invitation, messaging systems, and friends list integration. Old habits die hard for Sony, but as the only system with a hard drive standard they have the ability to keep building the PS3 up.

Blu-ray has bolstered its fortunes as well with the format war over since very early this year. That means the Blu-ray brand has been growing all year long with large racks of titles visible at major retailers. Yes the discs are more expensive than the DVDs that may cost under a buck each to press, and you’ll pay just $1 per month more to get’em from Netflix, but it’s still a great feature to have available. You’re going to play games in HD, you might as well get your movies in the winning format.

It’s of course not all wine and roses for the system now. It’s still losing money like crazy for Sony and some analysts are predicting the thing might never break even. Publishers still favor the installed base leaders overall, as you’d expect any sane business to do. Lastly, the system was leading in sales just as one of the worst economic situations hit not just the US but the world. Such things don’t make people likely to spend more for a system to get premium features — again, price is a drag on PS3 adoption.

Still there is strength to the Sony brand, and the software is compelling to all sorts of people. This year I saw a coworker and her husband buy one so she could play the newest SingStar game after she’d had her fill of the PS2 versions. Another friend of mine dropped by the other day to experience LittleBigPlanet. He’d had an Xbox last generation, got a Wii that his kids are enjoying, and said to me he’d be picking up a PS3 this Christmas “because I’m ready to play real games again”.

Two years in, eight to go if the “ten year plan” is to be believed. For the official Sony scoop on what they think of this second anniversary of the system’s launch, hit The Official PlayStation Blog here.