I agree with everything except the built in mic or Playstation Eye. I think it is possible, but unlikely. Beyond what you said, it goes without saying it will use a new graphics chipset, delivering perfected photorealistic graphics, not like the crude photorealism we have on 360 and PS3. Hopefully they will keep the controller similar again and not give us something in any way resembling the Wiimote. HDMI cable out of the box? In 2 years this is a possibility for the PS4. Hardware BC with PS2 and 3... lets hope so!

Ps4 may get Sony back to 2nd place again next gen if they play their cards right. Inspite everything, they still have some brand name, or else Ps3 wouldn't have sold anything throughout the sw-slow periods.
They won't touch 1st place though. The Wii2 will outsell cellphones, computers, clothes and finally, in its peak year, will outsell food. That'll be the year Miyamoto runs for RULER OF THE WORLD!

Does anyone think it's possible to get rid of the drive all together?  Not to replace with download, but to replace with some sort of flash memory that games would ship on? 

I've seen 16 GB SD drives in the $20 range at retail.  8 GB (just about the current max on a 360's DVD) can be bought in the low teens.  I'm sure a manufacturer can get them significantly cheaper.  Just a few years ago this type of price wasn't even possible.

So if a 8-16GB card were to come down to the $3-$5 range by 2012, it would be a great way for Sony to go.  They could spend $1 to manufacture a the drive for both their PS4 and PSP2. 

^ I really don't see the optical drive being a huge expsense to include by the time the new gen starts - they should be able to get a 4x BD for under $20 wholsale in 2012 (especially if they're making them).

So if they were to implement your proposed solution - sure you'd save $20 off the console itself but you'd have to pay an extra $5 for every game - so buy more than 4 games and you're worse off. For if they don't up the price then they'll be losing all their royalties on the cost of the flash storage card/cartridge and then no one benefits, not the consumer and definitely not Sony.

I have no idea what will come, but here's what I hope:

1. No more than $399

2. At least 1 AAA launch title, and at least 3 A titles

3. More powerful than PS3 -> but not as drastic as the change from PS2 to PS3

4. Plays Blu Ray movies still

5. BC with PS3, PS2 and PS1

6. No built in Wifi - make it optional

7. Free online still

8. Comes bundled with a good game, required HD cables, headset, and Dualshock 4 controller

1. CPU won't be cell processor. More likely a 4-core from ???

2. GPU comparable to todays hd4850

3. 1,5 GB shared memory

4. 250 GB HD

5. Bluetooth and Wifi

6. USB 3.0

7. 8x BD-Drive

8. completly new controller

9. all games full hd 1080p

10. hopefully low power consumption especially at idle and BR

Let's see how PS4 compares to XBox 720 from both a games and specs perspectives, when they are released in three or four years time from now. Hopefully they will be fully BC with the PS3 and XBox 360 libraries.

On the Xbox360 side back compatibility shouldn't be a problem. If Microsoft plays their cards right the migration could be very smooth. On the PS-3 -4 side everything depends on the PS-4 Processor, if it is a normal Multicore CPU, as I expect, there will be severe problems with titles that use the SPEs.

Now that the initial and most expensive development of Cell is done, it would be unwise to throw it away, they could simply put the same or only slightly increased number of SPE's in next model, adding more PPE's (that are PowerPC cores, ubiquitous in consoles, so easing porting amongst consoles and making 3rd party developers happy) instead. Already in 5 years from PS3 release, for Moore's law, a 4 PPE's, 12 SPE's Cell would cost less than the current one, not only at release time, but even now. By then, BD drives too will be cheap. Throwing away all this when they are cheap, after paying so much to develop and launch them would be crazy.