I am not trying to make a decision, I am making a counter point to the fact that MS has to shorten their stragety based on Sony Reveal.  There are always pros and cons to any marketing and Sony reveal in Feburary is a marketing stragety.  I cannot make a decision because I have not seen MS hand.  Once MS make their reveal then we will have a better understanding on MS stragety and how it matches up with Sony.  In my intial statement, I am trying to make a point that Sony is taking a risk.  Release info early gain good will but inform MS with plenty of time to make counters before your product hit the market.  Any business anaylst will be scouring the net, news site and developers on their input.  Most of this will be done by agencys hired by MS to perform this collection.  You disset that info and talor your respond to combat any Sony advantage and hype up on points where you believe you have a stronger product.  By E3 there will be over 6 months for consumers to digest information given which could lead to a great momentun swing for MS if they are able to successfully counter Sony strengts and exploit their weaknesses or vise versa.

What I do not see is any real momentun going forward with the PS4, I read a lot of sites and forums and it appears that because of the early reveal of the PS4, everyone is wondering and waiting for MS and either good or bad, they want to compare the two OEMs.  This in my opinion actually weights better in MS favor because the ball is in their court to either rise or fall.  Since pretty much everyone that is following this gen of consoles expect both to come out at the same time there isn't really an advantage Sony has on revealing their console early.

It would be totally different if Sony actually had a working console and was releasing lets say next month.  That would be a situation where they would have caught MS with their pants down with no respond if MS will release in November.  That would have given Sony 8 months on the market with momentun gaming with every month MS could not get a product to market.  

The reason I suggest that having a product on the shelves first is because the people who purchase a brand new console on release is the hardcore market.  First adopters are the people who are serious about their games and having a console out on the market with games that are a mark improvment on the previous Gen woudl have been a killer feature.  launching a month after you reveal did not work for Sega because they did not execute their stragety correctly.  One company bad track record is not a presadent.  Look at Apple, they do the same thing, Announce and have product ready within the month and it seems to be working for them big time. It would be silly to think that If Sony announce a console and have it on shelfs a month later that they would not be blitzing commercials, mags, news sites and just about everthing else with they can find.  You can be certain if MS did this, they would blitz everything to get the word out.

People have stated that Sony reveal was viewed on Youtube by over 15 million people.  This is totally different from Sega time which such announcements reach was limited by a conference.

Taking the hardcore market before MS could respond would have set up quite the momentun that would have starved MS of those sells.  When the hardcore goes one way then they tend to swing the masses.  People start to talk about how great the system is and all the capabilies it offers now.  The mass market consumer will not be looking at the PS4 when it first comes out with it games centric message.  Instead Sony would promote their media hub capability to that crowd.

As for the PS4 releasing more info at E3, I have no doubts because there is a lot of information that is clearly not cleared up.  Instead that info just goes on the pile for both companies at this time and unless it trumps what MS is doing it will either be a point or a minus.

I don't know man, I still think there is a big difference between a small mobile device that is all inclusive and a large console that is dependant on big software titles from other companies who need and demand the time for promotion. Don't get me wrong, if PS4 launched this week after a month from announcement I'd be stoked, but publishers would probably be really pissed and unlike an iPhone a console might be harder to distribute to retail chains in large quantities.

I understand a shorter announce to launch period is better in today's market and I think that was one of the launch mistakes made with the Wii U, but there still needs to be time for marketing and that is what the PS4 is getting without competition from MS right now. Maybe not showing what the PS4 looks like is a marketing decision to serve as a more visual unveil targeted to the mass market while being able to announce the PS4 early on to allow games to be announced and the core to eat up all the details as they will probably be the only ones who do until launch.

Indeed I believe MS was caught off guard by the extremely successful PS4 reveal and the gaming world going wild about the 8GB GDDR5 RAM present that Sony gave to gamers.

MS has probably also noted how the Wii U sales are tanking, proving that the casual mass market on home consoles has been put in the history books and thereby Microsoft's design for the X720 as a low-spec, family oriented entertainment box might turn out to be a grave miscalculation.

These two things combined could mean that MS people are in panic mode at the moment.

Think there is a bunch of truth here

interesting take

I will agree that the mobile and console market are different but what I wanted to showcase is how a company can execute a reveal and delivery of product at the same time.  Apple is great at doing this and also having enough product ready for retail.  Being able to execute like Apple is what companies strive to do and that means having everything ready to go, hardware, Marketing and games. 

I do not understand why you would think publishers would be pissed as if MS or Sony would just release final hardware without giving it to developers so that they would have content ready.  What I am saying is that if Sony could actually have released, meaning they have finished product and ready to put into stores then that would be what I call a coup.  Being able to fill the retail channels with product and games before your competition like MS did to Sony last gen can put your competition on roller-skates trying to lessen the damage.

Revealing 2 to 3 months before your competition and not releasing until 8 really isn't going to make a difference enough to change people opinion when they will have over 6 months to digest tons of info before either system launch.

One of the advantages MS has over Sony is that they are operating in the black.  This means that you will probably get a blitz of the nextbox in just about every media MS can promote their product.  There will be commercials and TV spots, casual mags will have full page layouts including gamer mags etc.  MS will out spend on marketing because they can.  This is probably why MS is not worried about a few months of spotlight for the PS4.  Just like he presidential elections show, the group who can spend the most and advertise their viewpoint usually gains the marketing advantage.

Anyway this is all just opinion until November.  Right now I am just stating a different view point from MS was caught off guard or that they are giving away some type of advantage to Sony.  From what I have seen and read, there doesn't appear to be an advantage as anticipation seems to be rising concerning what MS will bring to the table.

Actualy, it doesn't.  Because it came to light at GDC that the PS4's memory architecture isn't as great as it sounds.

While the GPU gets the top speed, of 120 or 170 GBps, the CPU only gets 20GBps.  So CPU wise the two consoles are just about even steven, and GPU wise the next Xbox is only slightly slower. 

The margin of difference in performance now is less than 1%.

The opposite happened in the GDC... the PS4 architecture seems even more impressive and strong.

I do not know about the hardware for the PS4 being more impressive but I will say that Sony is making a lot of smart moves that will help developers to get the most out of the hardware.  Being able to get almost to the metal is one strong point.  Allow develpers to create their own extensions or changes to Sony low level API is another.  For developers like Naughty Dog, we should really see them excel at getting the most out of Sony hardware which is a big bonus.  It seems Sony whole attitude has changed this gen from last and its a mark improvement.  

I highly doubt that MS will let developers modify their API though they will have extensions to directX that will allow developers to get closer to the metal.

Another thing I like about Sony direction is how they are handling indie developers and making it easier for them to get content on their system.  Opening the system up more and lowering those old barriers is the right direction and move and Sony should reap benifits from this approach.