Releasing first is overrated, especially in Sony's case. I say that because they would still support and market the PS3. If the Microsoft 720 came out, the PS3 would still sell decently against it at a sub-$200 price point.

People forget that sales are a marathon, not a sprint. You measure a staggered race after both competitors have finished, not after one finishes. The PS3 is going to finish this generation nearly tied with the 360 for total units sold, and with a larger installed base. The important lesson Sony should take away from this generation isn't to release first, but to not screw up your launch.

Now, keep in mind, though I said "in Sony's case", I think the same could be true for Microsoft, but that's assuming that they don't support the 360 after the 720 launches.

I find it interesting that the article mostly ignores the existence of the Wii and the Wii U ...

There will likely be a couple "blurry" years between the current generation of consoles and the next generation of consoles as developers produce cross-generational games to manage the risk of next generation game development. Essentially, these will be games that are designed to use the XBox 360 and PS3 as base systems (similar to the minimum requirements on PC games) and will scale up to see enhancements on the most powerful next generation hardware.

If developers get used to producing games that scale and the Wii U becomes popular enough I don't see why they wouldn't eventually treat the Wii U as the lead/base platform. The only chance Sony and Microsoft have to really prevent this is to release their systems early enough that the Wii U doesn't sell enough systems to demand a version of most next generation games.

No problemo, knew what you meant and completely agree.

Both will launch in same time frame at or before the end of 2013.

I doubt it. Consoles don't usually launch until a year after they are announced and they are usually announced at e3. I don't see them launching until sometime in 2014.

The XBox 360 says Hi ...

If it is FULLY backwards compatible with the PS3 and has at least one decent exclusive game at launch, I'll get it on launch window.

No more than 400$ for console + game, though.

Sega Saturn just can't stop laughing.

You'd be suprised how many articles on gaming do.

I totally agree. I expect that both will HAVE to be announced at E3 2013 to try and stop what I believe would be the inevitable success of the WiiU. MS will release first, as Sony really is king of the waiting game and copying the other guy. So I reaaly don't see them launcing the PS4 before MS - for fear of the next MS console having some killer feature Sony that forgot to put in the PS4, lol.

So I predict that both the next MS and Sony consoles will be shown at E3 2013, with MS launching early 2014, and then Sony anytime after that.