like I said the main reason they got behind is they got bogged down with the cell and couldn't get the second cell gpu to work so then they had to run to nvidia and grab something basically off the shelf hence the weaker GPU than what was envisioned  and that was the revision they had , if they launch this year or next it will have to do with a few things one is sales going forward and that points to sooner than later still Sony most likely will wait to it's big 2013 titles have come and  gone on  if they hold back it won't be because of concerns about being out powered  there really isn't enough scope in todays market for one to blow away the other out of the water on pure performance and keep to a realistic budget  so they will settle for pretty much the base spec point Sony mentioned , the difference will most likely be the way both go about it , the other interest is do both parties have anything else up their sleeves in so far as changing the way we approach gaming  as to when you start the six month manufacturing time leading up to launch its pretty much the same for every one because chip design testing getting good yeilds sending it off to fab that's all been done .

@mjk45

I am somewhat befuddled by your train of logic. Are you arguing that upon unveiling the console was in beta stage. I have to be honest with you, and say that is highly unlikely. Especially given your comments. I will grant you that it could be within the realm of possibility that Sony spent close to a year trying to get the hardware to actually run, but even the most libelous fanatic of another brand. Probably wouldn't have the gall to suggest such a thing. It seems to me that even if the rumor mongers were wrong in their interpretation. With a design so young in its infancy it is entirely possible that Sony had scrapped a earlier design as little as weeks or a couple months previously. Whether that old design was early in its own design phase or much later seems kind of irrelevant.

As for your second train of logic. I think you are working off of the assumption that both consoles would actually be produced at close to price/cost parity, and while I concede that is probably the case for Sony. It most certainly isn't any kind of necessity for Microsoft. Who could, and would have incentive to loss lead by as much as two hundred dollars. While Sony may need to generate a profit per sale of fifty dollars. A two hundred fifty dollar difference in the component costs would indeed be noticeable. Maybe not to a casual observer, but to the seasoned eye of a gamer they would tell you one looked markedly better then the other.

I can most definitely see Sony balking at wading in especially with a rush job it they caught wind that Microsoft was going to out muscle them to the tune of a couple hundred dollars. I will grant you that design competency, and the use of a lot of big words can blur the distinction between two console that are maybe a hundred dollars apart, but at two hundred dollars consumers are going to know without a shred of doubt. Which would be kind of a problem for Sony at this point in time.

Sony just doesn't have a lot of strengths to leverage at this point in time. We aren't talking about the company the way it was a decade ago. Their software doesn't have near the value it once held, and they don't have the leverage they once had with third party developers. So they probably can't win the argument on the basis of games. Especially since Nintendo is a fucking beast in first party development, and Microsoft is actively edging them out in third party development. While at the same time upping its own first party game. So Sony kind of needs to be at hardware parity. They need to have at least one even position with at least one of their competitors.

I don't know maybe Sony thought Microsoft was going to loss lead by that much, but also thought a lot of that added cost was going to be in the form of a peripheral. Which they have only recently found out wasn't the case. I can see Sony buying into all the projector speculation surrounding Microsoft, and it may be tech that Microsoft does intend to release on this market, but not at the start of the generation but somewhere in the middle.

and xbox's lead has been less than 6 million for awhile.  Also they gave them a BIG headstart in terms of price and games of 3 years counting the one xbox wasn't on the market.  It's amazing PS3 sold as much as it did in 07 considering it wasn't even in Europe until March of that year.

As long as its not months or years im happy.