Either GDC 2013 or some Microsoft Conference. Both of which I believe are January/February time frame. That's my bet for the new Xbox.

They do need to talk about

it.  Before E3.

There really is nothing which points to announcing at E3 as being bad.

Unvieled, not announced.  Two different meaning.  They announce these before E3 to gain momentum and hype going into E3.

yeah I don't get the logic behind people saying "you can't announce at E3 and put it out that Fall!"  The way I see it Nintendo didn't start advertising WiiU until September or even reveal price and memory yet people still got hyped in time for the holidays.  Considering Apple unveils their stuff a week before it comes out and their stuff is just a yearly incremental upgrade, I think people have enough time to check out and get hyped up for a console in 6 months.

Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 Slim at E3 and shipped it at the same time. So there is a small chance that they'll announce it and release it in a very short space of time so people throw their money down right when their hype is at the maximum. It'd be a very good tactic to announce it with a price and a date and give people the opportunity to pre-order the console right away. The same also applies to the PS4 as well.

Nintendo did a very poor job of hyping up the Wii U and it seemed even as an informed gamer I felt left out of the loop because they didn't finalise release dates or even get the message across about what the Wii U is very well. Nintendo made the announcement of the Wii U feel like just another E3. They had their reasons to not give away too much of their future plans for comercial reasons but I think they ought to have at least shown something like a snippet of Zelda gameplay or say that the Zelda demo was going to be 'real'.

yeah I agree that would be the best option, but why did Sony release the Vita in Japan first despite it having like no Japanese games? There has to be some reason to that.....

yeah they've done that with both portables if I'm not mistaken.  I don't get it and I don't get how they could miss the holidays by mere weeks and the millions of install base it would bring in.  I feel like if it and xbox launch at the same time they will be in a deadheat even if people want xbox more.  My logic there is that xbox may sell out first, but there are always supply shortages so then parents will buy PS4 considering their kid probably just wants COD or something that is on both.  They won't pay $1000 for an xbox online before they get a PS4 for $400 so they would almost certainly both sell out.

because  the PSP was huge in Japan

I'm still calling it, but Call of Duty will stay on PS360.  They ay port it to the new consoles but they will still be for current hardware as well so it wont be a system seller until a few years.