I feel like they're trying to cut into the PC market with this. The general consensus is that it is unlikely that you will be able to buy a PC that outperforms the PS4 for less than the latter's launch price.

The PS3 did badly initially in no small part because it was so hard to develop games for it. They've definitely fixed that. The most important thing is that they don't bleed money like they did with the PS3. That is, it doesn't matter hugely if the initial launch is slow, because as we saw with the PS3, even an abject failure of a launch can lead to upwards of 75 million sales (and probably a fair bit higher before the thing is discontinued).

If you flip a coin three times and it lands on tails each time, have you proven that coins can only land on tails?

Yes you have

It's not too powerful. It's got a low power consumption laptop CPU and a mid range GPU. But yeah those 8GB of GDDR5 RAM is sure nice and within a fixed console architercture with lowish overheads (compared to PC) and a 30fps frame rate limit for most games will give us beautiful looking games.

But being too powerful isn't an issue in any way what's so ever. What is a potential issue is price, availability, ease of programming, third party support, excluisves, marketing, public relations...seems like Sony has all those areas covered considering it's x86 based.

Beat me to it. Also back to the OP, The Sega Saturn was indeed a huge bitch to develope for. But when developers took the time to make a game that utilized the Saturn the best way posibile, it was a helluva lot better looking than PS games.

This machine is built to stay for about 10 years. Look at the Wii: It had amazing sales in the first few years, but after about 5-6 years it just completely died in terms of hardware sales because it was so outdated. Software sales were also not as good as the HD consoles. Now look at the PS3 compared to the other consoles. Because it was so high tech for its time it is still doing decent around the world so many years later. Same thing with PS4. They are going to make a powerful machine to last and that for us gamers is a good thing because we don't have to buy expensive hardware every few years. Sony might take a loss at the beginning, but they will come out profitable overall with the PS4 if they don't make the same mistakes they made with the PS3 (bad architecture, ridiculous price and late launch), which they don't seem to be making. I think it is wrong to think the PS3 failed only because it was powerful. It didn't do well because of many other factors which I don't think will come into play this time around with PS4.

It's more about the console's ability to generate a profit which is doubtful unless they plan on having it at an expensive price or they charge for online. Otherwise they will have to rely on PS3 to basically carry the PS4 and Vita for the next 2-3 years which will likely be difficult as that console's sales will start to drop like a rock at the start of next year.

Also if Microsoft doesn't take the bait and leaves their specs where they are it opens up the possibility of a $100-$150 price difference between the two consoles.  Add in the subscription deals Microsoft experimented with this generation and it could prove to be disastrous for Sony.  IF there are also shortages due to the increased RAM it could turn into a perfect storm against Sony.

Didn't Kaz say he didn't want to announce things first because others could then copy and improve their specs...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/21/ps4-sony-will-let-microsoft-make-first-move