Utter garbage. Where do some of you pull this rubbish from? $170bn in cash, wtf?

Sony has about $7bn in cash, the rest is in long term investments, building, inventory and machinery. 

TOTAL assets are $161bn

TOTAL liabilities are $137bn

Not much room there any more.

So you see they dont have a lot of money to burn, infact if they repeat the last 3 years in the next 3 years (I dont think they will by the way) then they wouldnt exist any more. 

Are people this oblivious to the real situation?  A companies value doesnt just collapse for no reason. You seem to think that Sony can do what the fuck they want with zero consequenceand that they are some kind of super company.  They arent... not anywhere near.

3rd Revision

Ist Revision: 

without more ram that will be a horribly under powered system especially when we have devs talking about game engines that will need a 64 bit cpus due to the amount of ram the game will use. 

I expect sony and ms to ship with a min of 6 gigs of ddr3 and would not be surprised if they are trying to hold off for ddr4 which should see first volume use next year in servers so its reasonable to think it could show up in consoles as a deal to help early demand and keep costs down for manufacturers by guaranteeing some product sold

gpu will probably be AMD but id guess the next version say 8850 2-3 gig gddr5 or could be a custom build again a family mod of the new core AMD has … it does look like nvidia somehow lost out on all consoles this time

as for your cpu, a custom APU would make since if AMD  can get its ass in gear on the power/heat issues it has right now and i don't see the bulldozer linage cores ever providing the kind of  single core performance that you really want in gaming, unless AMD has figured out how to ramp them up to the needed 4.5+ ghz without the monsters heat 

i think another custom power family cpu  (cell is a power family cpu) would work best but maybe they don't want to pay IBM or freescale to build it. 

as for storage flash +hdd. I think sony may monazite the HDDs like MS did last time, its a major revenue stream they missed, and thats strange for them because they love locking down memory for storage with proprietary formats 

blue ray will be in the first console, then later a revision with download only and an external reader if you want it. … i see both sony and ms doing this. 

450 bucks tops coming out …. 

though i fear they may see MS subscription model and feel thats they way to sell a more costly console and guarantee revenue and we will see 199 consoles with 2-4 year contracts

I didn't include my premise in this revision which is, I don't expect Sony to have the strongest next gen hardware. IMO 4GB is enough for a gaming console, but it all depends on one's own expectations. I don't expect next years next gen consoles to cath up with the latest and best PC tech will have to offer in 2013. 1080p should be a target, but "Ultra graphics at 60fps and high levels of AA" across all games would throw out any $400 console.

the console put forth makes more sense then, but in the state listed it would need to be replaced again in 3-4 years as opposed to consoles like the current ones, and i think a longer term solution is best. though devs may hate it, it will get more of the market behind the console in the longer term and should result in more game sales over all. I still feel right now if we had an appropriate price cut to the ps3/360 (and it looks like sony is game for it) the market could bear these consoles for up to 2014 for a refresh. even when their replacements hit the market I expect them both to stay available for purchase in major markets for an additional 3 years …

this gen has been a strange one, i don't think we have had enough time yet to look back and know if the wii really grew the market or just created a massive anomaly, or did "mobile/social gaming" really knee cap home consoles just as they were becoming for everyone.

for me the wii failed to put a follow through in its promise with a real sustainable wave of games to push it. that lead to apathy of gamers who were buying it. the PS3/360 are suffering from prices being above consumer expectations. in MS case also slowly alienating core demographics with pore UI (it amazes me how far the UI on the 360 has fallen in terms of usability since launch), and corporate messages. In sonys case constantly shifting the corporate message and reneging on promises. both of these have hurt sales, though not in a  major way yet, but i feel it may impact the next generation more than the current one 

edit : the return of indie games I think is a major shift as well it will be interesting to see who can really treat them right.... and always a posibility of a steam box... a real fourth player 

It's their next-gen core architecture. Steamroller APU's are pegged for manufacturing sometime next year (Piledriver is just rolling out this month); however, appearantly next years APUs wont have "full Steamroller cores". Steamroller FX CPU's will be available till late 2013 at the earliest. If the PS4 is to have any form of Steamroller and come out in 2013 then it would be an APU. Waiting for the CPU would be more ideal.

Of course this is all assuming Sony goes with AMD.