I don’t think any of the console manufacturers are in a rush to release their next console, but I also don’t think any of them would allow their competition to release a new console without answering it in a timely fashion.
From 2011 and beyond, producing a console that can play a game like Crysis at full detail at 1080p while maintaining a framerate of 60fps will be fairly easy and inexpensive. When you consider that a game developer can easily reduce the frame-rate to 30fps and the resolution to 720p without impacting the user experience, it is unlikely that you could produce meaningfully better graphics (to consumers) without producing a system that was (at least) 10 times as powerful.
Only a foolish company would leave their competition on the market for 24 months to build a library, their brand and to work on reducing the cost of their system knowing that they could not produce a system that was advanced enough in comparison to this system to encourage gamers to buy it.
