When an investor asked Sony to explain why there had been an increase in research and development costs, a Sony senior executive said that work on the PlayStation 4 is “already under way”.

“For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life,” said Masaru Kato, the Sony chief financial officer, according to Eurogamer, “but this is a platform business, so for the future platform—when we’ll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there.”

Whilst this is exciting news for PS4 fans, it is not inconsistent with past remarks, and is in-keeping with Sony’s stated 10-year lifespan for the PlayStation 3. The PS2 hit its 10 year anniversary last year; the PS3 was released four years before that, so this may suggest a two year wait until a 2013 launch.

PS4 Features, Specs & Rumours

• PS4 with a 32nm Cell processor an up to 16 SPEs, double the number in the PlayStation 3.
• A partnership with Google. Sony’s new fondness for Android on the Xperia Play is an interesting strategy.
• Blu-ray on the PlayStation 4 is a dead cert.
• As Kaz Hirai said, “we do business in parts of the world where network infrastructure isn’t as robust as one would hope. There’s always going to be requirement for a business of our size and scope to have a physical medium.”. The dependence on digital distribution is therefore a challenge for PlayStation.
• As for the PlayStation 4 controller, Dr. Richard Marks (Sony Computer Entertainment’s US R&D manager of special projects) says that “anything that lets us get the player’s intent into the system more” is technology they’ll be looking at.

When it comes to PS4 rumours, there are plenty to read, digest, and perhaps discuss. However, over at the Playstation HQ, things are quiet.

PS4 Boss, Kaz Hirai, said recently, “we’re not deliberating on a PS4 or a next generation machine, whatever you call it.”

Instead, Sony seems to be concentrating on the PS3 and extending the PlayStation brand into the mobile phone market with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.

However, in stark contrary, Microsoft is now hiring engineers to spec the next Xbox, rumoured to be named the Xbox 720, but it’s far too early to confirm that.

The latest spec rumour is that the PS4 could abandon the Cell processor and return to x86. Earlier this year there were rumours of a failed Sony research project to develop a PowerPC chip for the forthcoming PlayStation. Our view is that Sony will go with their advanced cell processor that cost a rumoured $3 billion to develop. Here’s why:

1. Easy backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 3
2. A familiar development environment.
3. When the PS4 comes out, games developers will have had much more experience working with Cell and its software tools.
4. Toshiba recently sold its Cell factory in Nagasaki back to Sony for £400 million. Sony is hardly going to abandon the chip now it owns the means to manufacture it in bulk.

So what’s the latest rumour about a PS4 release date?

Interesting. One view is that the whole concept of a single lounge-bound gaming device may become obsolete. As such, the PS4 as we know it does not exist. Instead, console gaming may well lie in a more portable device, that is played on the move.

Sony claims that the PS3 will have a 10 year lifecycle, suggesting the next PlayStation will arrive by the end of 2016 at the latest. Or we might not get a PlayStation 4 at all. Developers haven’t yet maxed out the potential of the PS3, while the release of PlayStation Move has given it an extra dimension.

“Where we go after this is an interesting one,” says Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss Ray Maguire. “The online side is very interesting and is a big part of our business going forward. But in terms of what sort of technology we’ll be using, it’s far too early to say yet because we’re only half way through the lifecycle of PS3 – there are many years to come on that machine.”

So it looks like the PlayStation 3 is here for quite a few years yet.

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