I personally am not looking forward to another generation of consoles anytime soon.  I think the only one that may have a new one coming out within the next two years is Nintendo.

Not so sure.  Hardware sales are slowing down for all systems.  Artistically, yes, it is relevant if a piece of hardware has not been tapped fully into, but business-wise?  If sales come to a halt then you can be rest assured that a new piece of hardware is coming to the forefront.

 And next year will not be as nice to the big 3.  Microsoft luckily had Kinect to help them through and Nintendo had their Sports Resort and NSMBW from waaaay earlier in the year (Donkey Kong was a nice sell, but it didn't carry them this christmas).  Sony, the one who wanted to stay in the generation the longest, wasn't as lucky as the other two.

I can possibly see Nintendo scoring another Sports Resort type hit with Zelda: Skyward Sword, and that is because it uses the Sports Resort mechanics as the main gameplay system.  And it's those types of hits that move hardware.  As for the other two guys,  there will not be any other major hits coming close to the relavancy of Kinect or Black Ops.

We'll see new hardware from all three the November two years from now, at least.  Not this coming year though for Nintendo considering that they can't release a huge motion controlled Zelda hit only to have it shine sales wise for a year.

Hardware sales are quite nice for 360 with Kinect out now, and that's with no major price cuts yet.  And do you really think that a $199 PS3 isn't going to sell through the roof either?  The only hardware that's slowing down is the Wii (which by the way still had an INCREDIBLE holiday this last year), and will do just fine in 2011; the Wii is not even $149 yet, much less it's eventual price of $129 or even $99.

I do agree that it is likely that Nintendo will have the Wii's successor at the end of 2012 because they have already profited ridiculously well, but you are surely mistaken if you think PS4 will be coming that early.

Whether the PS3 can ultimately surpass 360's sales was not my point; that's another debate entirely.

You seem to think that PS3 is so far behind that there's no hope for it in the market in general; most would agree it will never be market leader... it doesn't have to be.  The PS3 launched at $600; its price has been the main deterrent, not the fact that it's not doing anything different.  Check out ioi's recent thread; both PS3 and 360 will remain very relevant in the market and extend this generation out much longer than they have been in the past, which was the point of my post entirely.  Neither Microsoft nor Sony are in any hurry to release a new console anytime soon, and I guarantee that you won't see a PS4 in 2012 as you seem to believe.

PS3 in particular already has a slew of high profile exclusives for 2011.  Are any of these games poised to sell like a NSMB or COD?  Of course not, but with a list of exclusive games like this, a blu-ray player, the most advanced tech on the market and an almost guaranteed price drop this year, why wouldn't new customers want a PS3?  Again this isn't to say that Wii or 360 are doomed, far from it.  What I'm saying is that PS3 is hardly out of options.

i'll second that

why do we need a PS4 anyway? its mostlikely going to be the most powerful yet as cheap as the others with a more streemlined way of developing on the playform

give it up people 2014 if not later. this indusrty can do with out next gen for sometime!

money even with slowing sells can be made on the Wii with vitality yet to be released, Move is still a viable product with more yet to come, and Kinect (as MS has siad) should give 360 another 5 yrs although i don't think they need Kinect for that.

so dev. cost can go up to $150m- $200m, and games can cost $100-$120 with special adiions costing more then that.

well thats how i see it anyway. dev cost arin't going down sothink about that before next gen comes to mind people.

it's probably accurate, even if Nintendo and MS release a new console soon I really can't see them being significantly more powerful then ps3, not at a resonable price anyways and Sony's profits and sales keep increasing I really don't see why they would release the ps4 until ps3 sales start to drop significantly yoy and they haven't and I don't think they will I don't even think ps3 has peaked yet

Then what was the actual translation? Seems to be nothing was mistranslated, they took their people off the ps4 because it's coming out so much later theres no point in working on it on now with the current rate of technological breaththroughs 

They should release a "true" PS3 slim later this year or early 2012 and drop the price to $249 or $199 and that will tide everyone over for a couple more years until the PS4 is necessary (2013 or 2014 maybe)

I'll have to wait to see what exclusives PS3 has in store that they think will move significant hardware, though I won't count it out yet.  Also, I have to wonder about the draw of the cheap(albeit a great value) blu ray player.  Because it's definitely not the primary reason people by gaming hardware in the first place, especially when the difference between HD is noticeably smaller for consumers than the difference between SD and HD.

As far as that goes, there just comes a point when the consumer appreciation of a technical element(resolution here) stops increasing at the same rate of the technological improvement.  When HD came out, consumers noticed that.  I didn't feel that same hype when the term "blu ray" got thrown around.  You can get a standard blu ray player for a hundred bucks right now.  When the PS3 gets down to 199.00, stand alone blu ray players will be cheap fodder.

I will agree with you on your point about PS3 being able to be content with third place this generation, as opposed to being third place last gen.  They are fine with where they are and have not been made irrelevant within the industry by any means.  I still say 2012 for PS3, and I actually say that for all of them.  But I will be sure to give you props if ur 2014 prediction comes true.  It's just that we've never been in this scenario before where we may actually exceed a 6 year console cycle (almost all are 5) so everything is more up in the air than usual when it comes to theories.  I'm excited to see how everything plays out.

yeah, I very well support it and the consoles will have the potential for assuring long legs of gaming on it, that will extend through 2012  to even much later. When I could play dead space 2 on a seriously outdated rig with geforce 6600 GPU and just 1GB of RAM, so will games that are both hardcore and casual, based on newer graphics engine continue to impress and sustain sales on these far superior consoles. This can be also a speculation based on the hardware tech horizon. But the consoles will definitely stay out longer. So if there is any room for marketshare to extend, it will be the price of the consoles and the reliable technology. PS3 has blue-ray media for running games intended for the hardcore, whereas 360 has Kinect for the casual.