I think the Microsoft comes out with a new console first. Sony is still trying to turn a profit with the PS3. I see the PS3 going until 2012 at the minimum. They started out ridiculously slow and with a premium price tag. I think you see Sony drop the price and have a wave of great games hit the console in the next couple of years, and they hope to continue to sap off of their PS2 user base when those late adopters decide to upgrade. With the losses they have taken and the current economy, I don't think they are in a rush to drop a new console. I think the name of the game next gen for the console makers will be to keep costs low. This gen has shown that a low price tag is a big deal in the mind of the casual consumer. With how good graphics are now, and with 3rd parties making less exclusive titles, the price tag matters more than ever.
Agree, it's too early to already be thinking of the next gen. Apparently the PS3 has much untapped potential still, it's just that it has higher learning curve for developers than say making games for the 360 since which is very close to PC ones. I want more games like Metal Gear Solid, Jak & Daxter, Drake's, etc. Patrick Soderlund, Senior VP of EA Games, “I do think that we'll see developers inside the organization getting to understand the PS3 better and I think that we're getting more power out of PS3 right now... I think that we've maxed out the 360 but we haven't maxed out the PS3."
They should strike deals with either AMD/ATI or NVIDIA and have them heavily involved in the development. I could see a machine in which virtually everything the console is asked to do is GPU accelerated. Slap a power sipping ARM core (or four) for the things that don't translate too well to CUDA/OpenCL. The cell chip is nice but it was a completely unnecessary expense for Sony.
