One up the competitor that puts up their specs first. One upping the competition is taking straight out of the American Corporate bible. Microsoft unveiled their specs and Sony decided to one up it with a more powerful system with better specs.

Eh, MS still havent officially unveiled there specs 

I agree with others the final box probably just wasnt ready in February, and also it was a good way to help build hype for E3, it will be shown June 10th it said in the teaser video.

I didn't know a VHS player was a high end A/V product.

I'm pretty sure they didn't show the box because they had two basic design choices available. One box with internal power supply and one box with external power brick. Now that they know XBox One uses an external brick (which very conceniently was missing at the presentation.......) they have both options at hand. If MS had shown an internal ps and Sony with an external ps right from the start, the msfan internet crowd would have gone "look at that horrible brick" right after the presentation. If Sony got over the thermal problems, a single box with internal ps would be the right choice now.

Doesn't matter, it set them up for a good strategy. They were able to steal thunder from the Xbox one reveal with the teaser, and it will also allow them to steal thunder during E3 as the PS4 reveal will be the main discussion of most blogs & articles.

It's already finished by now. It has to be in mass production as we speak to have any chance of launching this year.

in the end looks like Nintendo did right launching a year earlier, it shouldve launched earlier still, like in october ww

You're in the minority, the general consensus: Its fugly. It doesn't have to look like a kids toy, but its still lazy designing, they didn't do much with it, and it practically looks like a VCR from the 80s. Then again, American companies aren't that great when it comes to designing electronics....... or cars. Dell being another example, designing some of the most awful laptop & desktop designs to grace the computer hardware industry.

Your consensus ist not necessarily the general consensus