I don't understand.  Even if it was a mistake to put the Cell in the PS3, why should Sony now, after the developers finally understand it, abandon it in the PS4?  I don't know why a more powerful version of the Cell should be radically harder for them to understand now that they have experience with the Cell. 

P.S.  Never mind this part -- I'm experimenting to try to discover the last smiley shortcut.  (u) (?) (d) (x) :-? :-/ :-\ :-% :-^ (/) (\) (b) :-| :-S :-7
http://www.vgchartz.com/includes/undecided.gif

Im not saying they are abandoning it in the next one, but just not developing it further, they did bail on the consotium developing it and sold intrest back to ibm, so it will cost more to develop a next one, 2 something that has been speculated, is the current board implementation in the ps3 limits the cells potential significantly, so if they changed the board io, and gpu set up, the same chip could provide significantly improved perfomance, without the cost of developing a new chip. I think thats where they are headed using this article and the supposed 2011 launch (to early in my op). and it would be radicaly harder to because of the way the central cell chip acts as an io controller, could make for new intruction sets, that must be planned for. also in future prior specs of the cell the chip would handle fx, something that has not been tried before. on top of that making 2 or more cell chips, or cell cores, on on chip would create a control problem, complex coding and io control would be needed, also recreation of assets to be able to work in a duel processor set up

god i hope not it will lead to a finacial collapse of that generation, i do not believe that new generation will be viable until 2012/3 at earliest, and it will hurt all involved. it could create a market crash as parents lose trust in a market that refreshes too often.

outside of that it will be good for the pc market, since it will be a pressed market, the pc market might become the more stable of the two

Goddog the generations usually last five years. What is the deal with everyone acting like a five year generation is unsual all of a sudden?

@darc, true, past generations have, but we have come to a point where the upgrade in graphics technology, is not as noticable as was in the past. honestly the more i think of the current gen i feel it is an unessisary gen that should have been pushed back by 2 to 3 years, i believe it would have helped everyone but ms to wait even further. sony could have been kept for crippling the potential of the cell, lowered cost, and had more games ready. these 5 year gens will cause another gaming market crash

I would say the average time/gen was pushed out to 6 years, last gen, and this gen it'll be longer... at least 7. New hardware still comes, but its harder and harder to make it cheap, especially with the world economic situation as-is, and no end in sight to oil issues, which is the crux of the problem.

Frankly I won't be surprised if it lasts 8 years, or if the "next gen" is just a ultra-low-power version of this gen, due to ridiculous energy and manufacturing prices in the future.

Yes, I know.  This is my response to halogamer1989.  My response to you is in the previous page:  
"OK, I did miss that part.  Thanks for the correction. 

But as for whether the speculation turns out to be true, I have to say that with the pace of technology advancement it would be extremely easy to have a considerably more powerful version of the Cell instead of just the same chip and still stay very cost effective -- in fact if Sony "did a Wii" this is exactly what would happen since the Wii is much more powerful than the Gamecube, just less of an advancement than the other two."

Note that unless I am seriously missing something (and I am far, far from an engineering expert so it's perfectly possible) a "Wii-like" upgrade would not radically change the system from what people will be used to dealing with in the PS3.   

sorry about that, reading comprehintion needs work on   my part

No problem

All I know is that when Q4 of 2011 rolls around I will have had my 360 for 6 years.