I don't really care when it comes out, I'll end up buying it anyway, always preferred PlayStation over other consoles. But everybody thinks it coming out in 2012 might be a bit early, and it might be, but once the PlayStation 2 was made they followed through with a slim version of that within a few years and then they began making the PlayStation 3. The PS3 Slim was put out in 2009 so that's a 3 almost 3 year window for them to have began making/designing the next PlayStation. I doubt they'll call it PS4 though.

Only thing I'd point out worth caring about is that Sony could triumph from what everybody saw with the PlayStation 3, shows what they're capable of. When it first came out it was supposed to have been up to the standards of great gaming PCs then, putting some to shame even for a year or so. Obviously PC gaming is such high standard because people can freely upgrade theirs by buying and changing the parts like graphics cards and all that baloney. If Sony went a step further towards PC gaming and the attitude of PC gaming and began with the opening console as standard and as time goes on and new technologies get released for PC, to keep up with them time after time produce user-friendly parts that PlayStation owners can change in their systems just like a PC.

I'm not too sure how this would be done, but I'm sure the correct layout of the internal mechanics could be set out and labelled so clearly that literally any person could change the parts when updating their console. The console shell would have to be easily removed also, and even though theres always a warranty issue with taking apart consoles they could surely work out some system. Giving people the option to obviously use the original model without upgrading would still be available also but games would clearly be sub-par to the most updated PlayStations people can possibly have.

Game developers like DICE would be in ****ing heaven if some console implemented this kind of thing, even Battlefield 3 is proof. The PC version is beyond comparable with the console version as most people would know from seeing gameplay, and it's surely bother trying to make a game and having to make it downgraded for consoles and even the Xbox can't show the lighting as well as the PlayStation so they had to make a new system to improve it to match the PlayStation version. If the console was upgradable they'd basically be able to mass produce the same quality game across the board, except the one console that's still the same as on release date with its once up-to-date technology gathering dust.

It's why Call of Duties have gone so bad the last few years. The originals were based on PC and everything was put in place on PC to be the best it could be and they put as much effort into the PC versions as possible and gave great perks to having it on PC. Once that was all done they'd downgrade it as much as possible and tweak it to go on console but still develop a great game on console because of how close they attempted to match it to the PC version. CoD 2 and CoD 4 are serious examples. New versions are the opposite, they seem to start on console first (the whole bullshit with Microsoft on Xbox :rolleyes because it's where most of the games are sold and they take that as the objective when realy if they just stuck to making the game as best as it could be on PC and then tweaking it for consoles it would still be an amazing game, year after year with the old "awww" and "ohhhh" we used to experience when we anticipated new Call of Duty releases from CoD up until CoD 4 and MW2 when the innovation and raised expectations came to a halt. Now it's all the same shit year in, year out.

Sorry for this being so long, but I didn't go off on too much of a tangent.

I hope they do bring out a new line of consoles for PS and Xbox sooner rather then later, PC gamers are already suffering from these platforms as game developers are primarily focusing on these and then the PC users get poorly converted ports of these games that in no way utilize the power that PC's have to offer.

For me the end of 2012 is too far away and 75% usage of the consoles abilities is still pushing it more then you should be comfortable, like with most things the maximum output should never be reached and only about half of that is at it's peak performance.

It doesn't mater when it's released as it will still be obsolete as far as the technology goes and as long as the console continues to be the leading platform the PC users will always be the ones to suffer.