and i remember when the dev of medal of honour said they'd maxed the ps3 out with that...

Maxed out from their stand point... some people can make more juice with the same oranges.

The PS3 is not going to compete with the 720, get it out of your head. PCs are multiple times powerful than the PS3 is now and the 720 specs will easily be on par with what PCs are at now or even better. The PS3 isn't that much more powerful than the 360. Stop fooling yourself. Saying the PS3 will compete with the 720 is like saying the original Xbox could have competed with the PS3 graphically. The original Xbox was twice as powerful as the PS2 and still doesn't compete with this gen.

But the Wii has successfully beaten the PS3 and 360 in all 3 major regions. i wouldve said the Wii is about the same power as the orginal Xbox (although i'm not claiming to know).

my point is that, the mass consumer dosent care or understand hardware specs. but theres a multitude of scenarios that can play out. for example Microsoft dosent support blu ray, meaning that PS3 still holds a significant advantage if the 720 dosent come with blu ray.

if Microsoft release a new console soon then they could place themselves in a Saturn/Dreamcast scenario.

and these companies are also buisnessess. the PS3 only recently made money and the 360 hasnt fared much better. so releasing a new console isnt just about matching your competitor; profitibility is key for a company. it would be financial suicide for Sony to release a new console straight after Microsoft does so close to the PS3's only made profit. maintaining the PS3 means they undercut their competitor - the developers dont have to learn how to use the architecture - and they already have huge 3rd party support.

however if Kinect does increase the 360 lifecycle for another  5 years, then Sony will use the PS4.

this, games like KZ2 and Uncharted 2 used all the system resources but know their sequals are getting better graphics by using those resources more efficiently

Just like the 360, It was maxed out before it even went on sale. The only thing the developers are doing is finding ways to make games more pretty, nothing more or less. If you want a console that isnt "maxed out" it'll be the one doing native 1920x1080p out the box with 3D and extreme graphics.

Using all or almost all of the systems of the systems capabilities throughout the game using the most efficient means, thats what maxing out is, so basically having all the spes running almost constantly, as well as ram with a 50 gb full disc using the most efficient software that is possible would be maxing out the ps3, the 360 I would say has been within 90% of it's limitations with alot of games, but I don't think the software is even close to being near a dead end with ps3 so I don't think it's possible yet 

Overall you seem to have your wires crossed, let me explain.

1. Consoles built on old processes and then shrunk onto new nodes aren't nearly as efficient as consoles developed with modern fabrication techniques and semicondictor designs, you can cue the NGP here if you wish. Where the PS3 is using a 512Mb chip a next generation console can use a 2Gb or 4Gb chip which means each RAM chip installed has between 4-8 times the capacity for similar cost. Where the PS3 has a 25GB/S memory bus a modern console can easily have twice to four times that bandwidth for the GPU alone.

2. Blu Ray players are cheap regardless, you can get one for $130 at Best Buy so its hardly going to be an important factor if Nintendo or Microsoft use the player but don't enable movie playback.

3. Whilst they may not care about technical specifications they do care about user experience. A next generation console from Nintendo is unlikely to be just a PS3 Full HD to the PS3s Wii HD. It is also unlikely that the PS3 with Move could out compete a full next generation console which is more than just a half step different from it and entirely focused on a single interface.

4. Releasing a new console six years after the launch of the previous console wouldn't kill any console manufacturer. There are more than enough early adopters to support a new console even if most people aren't ready to transition until well past 2012.

Well I heard from a credible source (the biggest Swedish mag) that KZ3 looks clearly worse than KZ2 because it has to reserve resources for the 3D.

In my own eyes, Im not sure yet. KZ2 looked solid but boring. KZ3 looks about the same.

Either way there's a bit more potential left in the PS3 than Killzone shows. I mean, if multiplatform graphics still can improve like Skyrim, Crysis 2, LA Noire and Rage apparently have, PS3 exclusives must too.

yeah, but bluray player for that cheap a shit.

ps3 is still one of the most affordable bluray player around, and its also the 2nd best bluray player there is, the best one is more than twice the cost.