The industry needs the PS3 the least of all the consoles right now. If all PS3s went poof today it would cause the least hardship.

Why aren't there articles begging Nintendo for a price cut? Im sure it'd to the industry more good than a PS3 price cut.

Exactly. It seems as if Sony has overstayed its welcome. They're like the Brett Favre of video games.

Sony's only problem with killing the PS3 off would be the huge backlash from the fanbase.

There would be an understandable lack of trust for any future consoles from Stable Sony

As much as all the DEVS and the SONY shareholders may be thankful to be rid of the PS3 SONY cannot afford to tarnish its reputation by quitting before it 10 year plan is up and it cannot fiscally afford a proper price drop at the moment.

I expect the PS3 to be nursed gently into its retirement home in third place and for SONY PR to kick in and label the whole thing a worthwhile endeavour.

Predictions :-

1. THE PS4 will be the first true Next Gen console to launch. It will not use Teh C3LL

2. There will be a token price drop in Q4 on the old style PS3

3. The PS3 slim will launch in Oct with a hefty premium price tag offset by a well thought out bundle.

I disagree, Sony will use Cell for the simple reason that it would be cheaper, allow for easy backwards compatability, and because they invested so much money and time creating tools and technology for CELL that dumping it all together would be a waste of that R&D as well as pissing off publishers who they themselvs have invested into CELL R&D, continuing CELL however will allow 3rd party developers to leverage all the previous R&D and it would be easy for them to make games since they know the hardware rather than having to learning things again if things changed.

I feel that a change of processor is likely.

The Cell has hardly covered itself in glory and although some advantages may become apparent I think there is more to be gained by moving back to a more mainstream architecture.

I know that the holy grail is that DEVS will learn how to use the untapped power and produce games streets ahead of the competition. The cold hard truth is that the DEVS have had the hardware in some cases 12 months before launch and PS3 titles barely indistinguishable from the HD  competition.

Changing back to a straight shooting CPU will mean that the PS4 will be able to stand up and be counted from day one.

I dont rule out further processing gains being found and a rise in production values from more modern games on the PS3 one day surpassing that offered by the MS console. But if you are going to cause DEVS to incur higher development costs for little or no gain you risk dwindling support.

^ 12 months? Kojima showed a MGS4 demo running on Cell hardware @E3 in 2005 and im pretty sure they had samples before then.

The vast majority received DEV kits 12 months ahead of launch due to shortages.

I do however take your point that certain DEVS have had much longer to unlock the holy grail that is the PS3.

If there is a PS4, it'll likely use the Cell, if only due to Sony's attempts to be like Nintendo and "innovate". Problem is, Sony's innovation with the Cell is very similar to Nokia's "innovation" with the N-Gage.