If you use crappy speakers and Ac97 codec on your mobo footsteps might sound awful but I doubt Sony can help it except for selling you a nice set of speakers or headphones. I do not find anything wrong with footsteps in my games and can clearly hear the difference between my steps and enemies. Using Sound Blaster X-Fi gamer and Beyerdynamic headphones.

Any half-decently written game will use EAX and that takes care of reverbs, occlusions, etc. Unlike Sony's technologies EAX is an open standard, same as openAL, which allows for EAX to be processed by dedicated hardware for more accurate audio.

There is EAX HD as well (128 simultanous samples each with effects - compared to 32 in a standard EAX), which is proprietary but licenced to several sound card manufacturers and no doubt a good sound card has a primary impact on gaming audio.

That's all valid assuming that samples used for footsteps were not confused with those used for wet farts in another production in the same studio, but that's rarely the case :)