Still won't stop Sony from pricing their PS4 $50 to $100 dollars higher though. As for last place, this is not a race; it is a ruthless business where decisions are made long-term looking back at the successes of PS1, PS2, and PS3 and adapting.

Sony will be there with a PS4.

I would hope not. I do like the Sony brand, I mean I've never had any Sony stuff that breaks on me, I've never had anything of Microsoft that breaks on me either (although I know they do break on people so that makes me wary). For some reason we had two gamecubes that broke, unlucky I suppose. 

But aside that, there's little appeal on a new console. I'm a little stunned that Sony has done as well as it has, this generation. I mean they scrapped all the old exclusives from last gen (what were they thinking? how are they supposed to bring in the players of say Jak, without having Jak, on there console) and whilst admittedly have done a brilliant job producing games themselves... everything else could have done a lot better. 

I can't imagine Sony will really even want to keep 20 first party studios open when there games are only hitting the lowest market share. I'm sure they have absolutely no intention of quitting the race, they are probably still pissed at Nintendo because of what they did with the SNES... plus we'd see signs.

To me it looks like Microsoft might be backing out, with Epic, Bungie and Bioware focusing on third party, but I guess this'd ruin Moneleux's dream of releasing 6 Fables. (good game but I think there's a point when a series needs a reboot, and Fable has probably hit it if F3 isn't a major success.)

Straying back on topic, last gen for Europe the PS3 release was like, a year and almost a half late. Earlier in America admittedly but what the hell is up with that, 8 million had an XBOX at this point, and probably many many more had decided upon it as the console to get, and not had second thoughts when they saw the PS3s price. 

If I were Sony I would release early, with less technical improvements (but enough to see sizable visual improvements), but supporting more OS features like cross game chat, video recording and publishing, broadcasting and spectator games, clan integration to XMB. And ensure it has pretty standard architecture for devs to work with. 

“Looking from the outside, it was Microsoft that released the first of this generation of consoles. Naturally, in my opinion, Microsoft will make the first move,” Yoshida said in an interview with Develop, “Or, because Nintendo’s approach was not to upgrade much on its basic hardware – Wii doesn’t even support HD resolution – so they might be the first to move…Probably the watch should be on these companies, in my opinion. Because PS3 was later than Xbox, and is more powerful, so it has a longer lifespan.”

This is the quote that prompted my post, by the way. For those who are unsure. What he does not understand is that as soon as the next generation has started, the lifespans of the consoles of the last generation, to the audiences of the hardcore. Have ended. 

I think so long as Sony keep architecture dev friendly, then the gamers won't suffer at all though, which is good, just console and according software sales will suffer. 

Its unlikely that Sony is going to be caught flat footed again. I think this generation has really proved that off the shelf and/or modified off the shelf designs can cost the same or less for equal performance as compared to custom designs and are able to be deployed much more rapidly. Even if Sony are late to the party, they won't be so late as to be completely outside of the launch window of the other two consoles. Its quite likely they will launch within 6 months of the second console to release at the latest if they don't launch second or first.

I wonder if it's possible to stagger the release of new hardware so that Sony isn't really competing on the same timeframes as MS or Ninty.

I think it depends a lot, on whether 3rd parties can do multiplats across the next gen Ninty and MS machines and PS3. If 3rd parties are down with producing multiplats for PS3 after Wii2 and 720 come along and PS3 provides a gaming experience close to those of the next gen machines then a PS4 isn't needed within the same release window, and Sony could do a mid-cycle release.

If Wii2 and/or 720 bring a whole new level of gaming that the PS3 struggles to match then 3rd parties will drop PS3 and Sony will have to be on with PS4 pretty quickly.

If PS4 is a Blu-ray based, amped up PS3, then launch price will be comparable to 720 at least (possibly not Wii2, if Wii2 aims as current HD console level tech).

I think neither MS or Sony need to respond to a Wii2 if the Wii2 is more or less at the same level of tech as PS3 and 360.

Sony has basically forced itself to be last to market in the next gen, because it's got to try to extend the period of PS3 profitability as long as possible to claw back as much of the early gen loss as they can. If they can finish this gen 1 billion in the red overall as opposed to 2 or 3 billion in the red then that gives them a less precarious launching pad for PS4.

I imagine that the Super Wii will be released in late 2011/ early 2012, while the 720 and PS4 will be released in the second half of 2012.

I think Sony is approaching a cross-roads, they can continue becoming first party oriented, or they can concentrated on the 3rd party side of things.  This will probably help determine the console itself and therefore it's release date.

That said, even if Move moderately takes off, Sony will not desperately need to replace the PS3 with a successor for a couple of years.

People undervalue the earlier launches of PS1 and PS2 historically imo, largely because of Sega's failed ambitions with simultaneous or earlier launches.  Unfortunately for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo aren't Sega, and we've seen what happens now when they launch alongside (Nintendo with DS/Wii) or after (Microsoft with 360) them... honestly, I think to some degree PS4 can probably wait out Wii 2 (as it's it'll probably be more PS3-plus class hardware) but if they launch a year after Xbox 3, it'll be just as detrimental as it was this gen for them.  And PSP2's practically stillborn at this point, 3DS is about as close to a "sure thing" prelaunch as the games industry has ever seen.

what did nintendo do to the snes??

It's all about the price. I'm not going to do any gaming next gen,so if really doesn't matter to me.

I don't Sony will suffer as much as they did this gen, the main cause to Sony's bad start was the price tag, I think has learned from their mistakes and their next gen console will be cheaper than the initial starting price tag of the PS3