sony coulds easily be 1st next gen, they could also easily be last. Hard to say, buying public can be very fickle

you may have a point. i know who i'm going with next gen?

UMMM actually sony pissed TONS of gamers off this gen.....REMEMBER all the backwards compatibility hype from sony, then wooopsie, all of the sudden THAT disappeared.  Remember all the cell promises that went unfullfilled? Remember how sony denied their frimware was bricking consoles then released a new firmware that stopped bricking harddrives?

The problems of the Cell are in the past, especially in a 3 or 4 years time working on the cell is going to be as easy as turning on a computer. Don't forget the PS2 was harder to work on then the PS3 was, and look at all the games that came out for the PS2, people will get use to it, and more then likely already did get use to it.

@Marcusdjackson

In 3 or 4 years time 200 - 350 GB will be dirt cheap, wouldn't surprise me to see a 500 GB HDD in the PS4 at an affordable price.

But even then, think of why Sony dropped backwards compatibility (to lower prices). Of course, my PS3 still has backward compatibility......what percentage of gamers got their consoles bricked?  I'm sure it's less than people who got screwed by the RRoD (I'm on my second 360-a Jasper-and even it died early this year and had to be repaired).  As for the cell, I'm not one of those tech guys.  I don't  know what Sony promised.  I know that console is pretty powerful, though. 

Now I'm not a Sony fanboy by any stretch of the imagination.  Look at my collection.  I prefer the 360 to the PS3 BY FAR, this generation!  But in terms of quality, Playstation consoles have been pretty consistent. And if somebody does something significant that Sony's console can't, there's a pretty good chance that the PS4 will "aquire" that ability...... I remember reading an interview before the Wii was announced and when asked about Nintendo, the being questioned said their console would have a problem because "There's always a problem!"  I scoffed at him.  When the Wii came out, I loved it but lets not kid ourselves.  The console has more than a few issues.  Nintendo consoles DO always have a problem!  This is coming from a guy who cut his gaming teeth on an Nes and has never NOT bought a Nintendo device that wasn't called Virtua Boy.

Mama always told me Sony is like a box of chocolates.  You always know what you're gonna get.  Forrest Gump's mama was full of shit.

Mind extrapolating on the bolded part? I'm familiar with the problems of wearing on the connectors with the toaster NES, and disk read issues with the Wii. (I personally have not had these issues, but I can't say they don't exist.) This is in contrast to Microsoft and Sony, both of which have yet to release a home console that has not had an issue, most of which are overheating.

I'd be interested to hear about the issues on other Nintendo systems, assuming they were actually widespread. It's possible that I may've forgotten about them?

A design problem, not a hardware problem.  The Nes was weak compared to the Master System.  The Snes had a very slow processor that produced LOTS of slowdown and flicker.  The Gameboy had monochrome, blurry graphics.  The GBA didn't have backlighting.  The N64 used cartridges instead of CDs.  The Gamecube used a media disc that forced some games (like True Crime to have less music and fewer missions and Splinter Cell to have smaller environments), and the Wii has weaker graphics and poorer online.  Nintendo makes the best games in spite of the console shortcomings (and the DS is perfect!) but their consoles always have some built in obstacle to owvercome.