not sure of th reasoning but it's an interesting fact.

The name was announced at E3, the device was announced at PS Meeting...

i was just joking around.  guess i should have added a smiley to my OP.    here's one now.  :P

The two big ones are GDC and CES

ces would be very early from now on but i could see console announcements on such events. we all know consoles will be more and more an all-in-one device and it wouldn't be too bad to announce a next gen "device" playing games, movies, music, tv-shows and whatever on such an event.

I think PSV was shown at CES if i remember right

I guess E3 is not really that important lol. What confuses me a little is that if they announce the system so early and launch it by the end of the year both companies will "kill" the sales of their current consoles.

Wasn't the PS3 announced at E3? Or shown off for the first time anyways.

How about first official footage?
Next year might be different though, it's getting more and more important to not destroy sales of the current gen. And as we all know, stuff gets leaked by the dozen.

ohh btw i just read that microsoft had the ces keynote for the past 14 years and one of the biggest booth and this year they won't have a keynote and not even a booth lol^^  so, seems like all we will see from microsoft is something other companies show.