Well, personally, I don't care for either. there's just not enough games for either that I care all that much about, that I won't be able to play on my PC when I pick up my next machine, and I don't care at all about being on the "cutting edge" when it comes to game releases anyway.
I would personally rather have a Wii, because it offers me sometihng I can't get with the PC already. It's also far cheaper than either of the other two consoles, which puts it more comfortably within any future console budget that does not involve older games and hardware, or handhelds.
However, to provide some less left-field responses, the 360 DOES have far more games at present, while the PS3 has basically nothing really worth buying and costs far more money.
I would also note, on the HD player issue, that the HD-DVD drive for the 360 is a seperate add-on peripheral, and not built-in to the machine.
If backward compatibility is important to you, you're in for a shaky go on either platform. The 360's works by driver updates for specific games, so not everything is covered yet, and the impression I get is that updates are slow, and likely to cease at some point in the future. The PS3 on the other hand, while originally released with full hardwar bac-compat for PS1 and PS2, they've been phasing it out with progressive models, first stripping out the PS1 emulation and putting the PS2 in software, and now there's rumors of a "budget" model with none at all. And as far as I can figure, it's not even necessarily clear on the box which ones are which, so prepare to get burned. All told, I'd rather have the former.
Ultimately, if forced to choose, I'd say the 360 wins hands down, especially on the games front, because there's simply more selection there.