More bones with some animation will be very welcome if there is no cloth simulation.
From other side http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwV4Ragc-Ew how hard add such physiqued parts to character model and blend them with normal animation, since there already used Havok Behavior for better animation blending and reaction?

Whether it's in or not doesn't matter to me,it's not going to stop me buying the game. I'll be too busy getting wrapped up in everything else. We manged with morrowind and oblivion,and other games....I ain't worried about it. I'll worry about it when the next gen of consoles are around etc.

GPU... or RAM

I'm crossing my fingers and praying to the TES gods every night for cloth physics... I mean, I'll still buy the game whether they're in or not, but I just can't stand looking at clothes that are made of concrete anymore

Woah woah woah, are you crazy? Who on earth would want cloth physics on every npc?

Even in assassin's creed, the only character who had cloth physics was Ezio himself. In AC brotherhood, even your fellow assassin's who had your same outfit had non-physics versions.

If there are going to be any cloth physics at all I bet it's only going to be on the player character

In my opinion ,it's just not realistic to expect full on cloth physics in a game like skyrim on a multi-platform. It's not going to ruin the game if it isn't there,lets be honest.
No doubt if it was possible,given the scale of skyrim,we'd all want it,but we have to be realistic here. We are already getting alot of improvements in allsorts of area's, animation etc. I thinks thats enough for now considering what skyrim and the consoles have inside them. Even if it was added,there would certainly be times you wouldn't even notice anyway,while playing through the game,because you're distracted by so much other stuff.

I made a waving flag once for Oblivion, and without cloth physics, let me tell you, it was stupid difficult. I doubt highly that our current technology will support a vast array of cloth physics. Perhaps clothing can be made to be animated on characters, but it won't be true cloth physics.