Not surprised, but interested nonetheless.

I can't speak for the Microsoft side of things because I don't follow them too much, but I just cannot see Sony launching next year. PS3 is finally doing really well for them and they have a solid line-up to last them throughout the year next year, much of it first-party. Would really cut into the legs of Last of Us, God of War: Ascension etc. (unless they somehow get backwards compatibility working).

There's still the handful of 'up in the air' games as well... Versus XIII, The Last Guardian, even Agent... then again, if Sony has somehow convinced Rockstar & Squeenix to move them to early PS4 and they've got TLG pushed back as well... that's going to be some serious selling power for the console, which is definitely good for them.

I also wonder that - if it was Sony, for arguments sake, where would they reveal it? They've kind of abandoned E3 these past couple of years and gone full-out at Gamescom, which honestly wouldn't be a bad move for them. Europe seems to be continuing strong as Sony territory at the moment. Then again, E3 would pander to an American audience that they could do with winning some ground in again.

Meh, gonna be an interesting year to watch in any case!

To challenge the Wii-U or play catch up with the Wii-U? lol

By releasing a console Fall 2013 (Halloween-Christmas) Nintendo WILL have some serious quality software ready on board that holiday (for Wii-U and 3DS). I don't know if it will be wise to have a console release without a killer 1P. In other words can rushing a console release be a good thing or bad thing?

Battlefield 4, Star Wars 1313, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes sound like they'll be ready for fall 2013, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff Sony and MS are sitting on and a lot of Direct X11 content coming in general that will be easy to port from PC to 720/PS4.

I don't think content will be much of a problem. Especially for Microsoft, they can just throw around money and grab some exclusives if need be.

I think a next-gen Gears Of War could launch with the XBox 720 next fall. Just a hunch though.

It's Eggsbox 720. And that's a good thing. If it actually has traditional controls and has a bundle without kinect, I would buy it on launch.

A 2 year gap would've been too big, there no ways the ps3 library would have been able to compete with the 360's 2 years worth of games. Also it wouldn't have done too much to help the launch situation as none of the Sony exclusives that year got tons prasie from critics and the actual production of 8 or so million PS3's throughtout 07 was what allowed the cost of blu-ray drives to be reduced in cost. 

I honestly think that for the PS3 to be the machine it was intended be (supporting blu-ray), Sony have done the best they could. The only thing they shouldb't changed was  that the cell proccessor was a waste of money and cost far too much, and there 1st party titles for the 1 should have been alot better, but you never know how a games going o turn out. They had over 3 games which looked like system sellers (Lair, Heavenly Sword and Uncharted 1) but the execution wasn't there and none of these game recieved the reviews they needed.

They've sold a ton of systems though and from a consumer point of view I would say its been a big success. They've obviously lost a big market share to Microsoft but thats less about what they  did wrong and more about what microsoft did right.

Since when Nintendo could compete with Sony's console (except casual players Wii). 

Isn't a new Gears game coming out in spring? I understand its being developed by seperate team but they would'nt release 2 full fledged/orginal Gears titles 9months from each other would they. And I believe Epic is working on multiplatform titles now, so I'm not sure if they would make it.

Announcement a few days before E3 and then the reveal at E3, according to the latest rumour, which I believe. 

I lol'd

Not with GeoW Judgement releasing next year. I think its performance will dictate whether they continue the series. If it does perform then they'll get people can fly to do 4 for the 720, but that would be at least 2 years away from the launch of Judgement. 

So there will be no Halo and no Gears near launch. They may be working on something big at one of their numerous new studios though.