Mazor,
Really do not know how much all of that will or will not impact people's choices. The MkIII upgrades did not impress me enough to swap up my three 1-series bodies. The 50D has enough speed and near-pro features to fit nicely in a lot of kits, including mine, but I am not happy with the IQ that I have seen. The 5DMkII looks like a super choice for a lot of folks, and with the HD video alone, may carry enough sway for many. I still have and use my M8 a lot, mainly because I love the small, unobtrusive size, enjoy the more involved activities in getting the image (it slows me down enough to help my compositions at times), and the files it produces are pretty amazing. I do wish it were full-frame and maybe 15-16MP without giving up what it produces now. The higher ISO noise is still not great, but manageable with careful shooting.
Going forward, I will still need something fast, weather sealed and able to handle higher ISO shooting for my sports action work. I thought the 50D might fill that bill for me, as the 40D was just not fast enough and lacked seals for my needs. For resolution and studio work, the 1DsMkII still works nicely, but I will probably look hard at the Leica S2 once it arrives.
On balance, the Nikons are very good also, and I shot Nikon for 25 years, but now have more tied up in Canon glass than I care to swap for that cost, so they are not compelling enough for me over what I shoot now. It is nice to have choices, however, what kind of bothers me is how some lines have gone a bit off track or not far enough to get the more ideal combination of features and capabilities. If I were starting out today, I would be excited about a lot of things, and may not realize what has been advanced and maybe given up with the succeeding iterations from the manufacturers. There are enough non-image tweaks to ergonomics, features, and other things to make many of the newer models very attractive. It is only when you really start to compare things closely that you see the trade-offs. If I was not printing as large as I do for some things, the newer kits could probably be very satisfying for most uses. But once you really get hooked on IQ, DR, no or very weak AA filters, etc., it is hard to move away from that, and some of these newer model cameras appear to be sacrificing some IQ for marketing buzz features. Just my opinion here, so I hope not to offend too many.
LJ