You're totally level headed and correct at the same time.

The problem is, is you have alot of people that don't understand the word NO.

 Officially announced (Given it's Name) yes....but MIcrosoft acknowledged XBOX 360 (XBOX 2) well before E3 2005.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1043_3-5063661.html  <------August 14, 2003 6:30 AM PDT

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1043_3-5063661.html

Like I said, every single company has at least acknowledged their consoles with at least 1 year lead time from launch since Dreamcast.  (Well, actually the Dreamcast was acknowledged/leaked by 3dfx and Sega sued them after).

Again, No company just springs forth a new major home console from out of nowhere and throws it to the market 6 months later.  Sega did that once (Saturn)....and as you can see, they are out of business.

But yeah...it doesn't work that way....as much as people would like to "Hope & Dream" that PS4 some how will....it just doesn't work that way, I'm afraid.

The Vita, then the NGP, was announced in Feb 2011; and then launched in Japan in December of 2011. I think the PS4 very much has a chance of getting announced and launching at least in Japan in 2013. I'd rather they hold off as long as possible.

Giving a headstart is bad, but lauching side-by-side with your "rival" can be very negative too.

The chances of the the other stealing your launch thunder are always big. Imagine Nextbox and PS4 launching on the same november... there'll be blood, and maybe victims.

If anything the time between anouncing a console and it's release could get longer next gen. The wii u was announce in June 2011 and 18 months later will hit the stores.

One important factor that people seem to ignore is innovation.

Last gen all developers had to worry about was a basic gamepad to interact with the game... apart from the wii.

Now the wii u has a new interactive gamepad with display (and the wii remote). Developers need time to implement this into games and gather an understanding of what it is capable of.

The next xbox will have a gamepad, maybe an updated kinect and god knows what else that developers need to sink their teeths into...surface?

Same for the PS4. Will it come with a new move controller, gamepad,  "kinect like" eye or tablet?

You can't seriously expect Sony, MS or Nintendo to drop all this on the developers and say "there you go, you got six months, gimme some games".

The developers need some kind of prototype in their hands for at the very least a year (and maybe that is too short) to be able to produce something other than shovel-ware at launch. And as soon as the prototype is is in the hands of the developers then that console is pretty much annonced.

The link doesn't work, could you quote the article?

Simply acknowledging a console in the press is completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with a successfull launch, I see no way in which it has any impact whatsoever and so I see no reason why sony will/must abide by the above pattern. All thats matters is that developers have had enough time with the dev kit to prepare games for launch, and the consoles actual reveaI and press which this generates. 

Yeah,

For some reason, on VGCHARTZ, if you put spaces after you "paste" the link, it somehow corrupts it.

You can put this link into GOOGLE and it will show up "first hit".

But I'll see If I can fix or repair it here and there though.

Here it is again:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1043_3-5063661.html

2014 looks now more likely, 2013 isn't totally unlikely, though.

I warmly accept Sonys decision to let MS have yet another head start :)

Again,

I don't want to make this about Microsoft or XBOX 3,

But XBOX 3 isn't lookin so hot for 2013 either.  Each day that goes by I see it slipping further and further.

My Prophet-Sage visions haven't been extended to Microsoft or XBOX 3 (yet), and I don't want to take this there, but there are no guarantees for that.

Just sayin.