No, Sony learned something from Microsoft this gen. The 360 arcade was a barebones 360 with limitation yet it sold. Sony saw this ad stripped feature out of the PS3 and also lowered the price the PS3 has seen a huge bump in sales since the Slim which has even less features then the stripped phat.

Next gen Sony will go with price over features.

LMAO! That was awesome xD

most likely nearly all of the ps1 and ps2 libary will b on psn and am sure the ps4 will still b usin blueray so most likey will b able to play the ps3 games as 4 the card readers i dont know

PSN backwards compatibility, definitely. PS3 , perhaps, hopefully with forward compatibility (upscaling to 1080p @ 60, no mandatory installs). PS2, highly unlikely as Sony has learned the cost of being too ambitious the hard the way this gen.

The most important thing is for Sony not to be taking things away every few months.

Maybe they will look at their original dream that the PS3 hardware was never able to fulfill, even at $600.
I think the PS3 was supposed to have 2 cells, one for the processor and one for the graphics. It was also supposed to have dual hdmi out, which would have been sweet for dual monitors, or LAN parties. My logic is fuzzy, but I believe all of that was true.

multiple cell processors will be included in the PS4. PS4 and PS3 disc based games will work. and all playstation games for gens 1-4 will exist on the PSN store.
3d will be a big emphasis

I don't think there's going to be a ps4, they might try a re branding.

If evolution happens (evolved CELL, similar/new NVIDIA CGPU or whaterver for a video card) PS3 full compatibility is sure to happen. And with PS2 games, quite possibly, being released on PSN (GOW already prooves it can be done) PS2 will problably be. As PS1 are still playable on Slim, I think that it will be in there also.

So, Sony may end up being with the only machine that can play nearly 20 years of gaming when they lauch PS4, with a reasonable price to boot. Amazing feat if it turns out to be truth. AS the other features (card things, more USB ports and the sort) I dont really miss it. But lets take that the PSEye camera will take one port (the PS wands are bluethoot to it) and so, it may have 2 to 4 USB (3.0? maybe...). Lets the future come!

The one thing I dont expect to see Sony doing is a 500-600 USD price tag ever again.

A faster blu-ray player is an obvious feature for the PS4 so PS3 game compatibility is a no-brainer and with the faster disc reader installs may not be necessary if the games are available and downloaded off of PSN.

PS2 backwards compatibility is likely. The number one thing that Sony needs to include with their next console even if they change almost absolutely nothing else is to increase the ammount of RAM. It's the PS3's single greatest bottleneck. Given enough RAM, the PS4 should be able to emulate PS2 games fairly easily even without the PS2 CPU or GPU.

I don't entirely expect SACD or Other OS support to return for the PS4. It's possible, but I would imagine that Sony is going to want to keep the cost down for the PS4 as much as possible at launch and there are plenty of other features that are in much greater demand. One thing I expect from the PS4 is that it will feature a lot more USB ports. I'd say 6 is probably a good number with at least one or two of them located on the back of the console.

Sony killed the rebranding idea by having a PS3. Then again if they don't reach second place they may feel dejected and want a new pair of shoes or something. Rebranding might be the best way to get away without backwards compatability.