Whether an announcement comes on Feb. 20 or not, it's a foregone conclusion that Sony will eventually release a new console. But don't worry about having to rush right out and getting the new PS4, or Orbis, or whatever it'll be called.
Sony plans on keeping support going for the PlayStation 3. Sony's CFO Masaru Kato believes that the console, "in its sixth year, I think it still has a long life. And here, we're not in the stage where we are losing money in the hardware anymore."
Sony could be looking to announce the PS4 very shortly, and though the company's CFO Masaru Kato wouldn't be drawn into discussing the next-gen he did admit there's still life in the PS3 yet.
Kato was asked about the fabled next console as well, but didn't go into any details about it, saying, "So again, there are discussions about the next platform, I cannot dwell on that at all at the moment. But in any case, we have a lot of business in PS3."
Rumors still abound about Sony's next-gen system, but nothing has been confirmed.
The PlayStation 4 is expected to abandon the DualShock brand of controllers for have a new one that will feature both a Share button and a PlayStation Vita like touchscreen, imitating the Wii U's Gamepad.
It's also been rumored that the new console won't be able to play used games, after Sony filed a patent application for a technology that would associate an individual game discs to a gamer's user account without an internet connection being necessary. Supposedly, contactless tags will be attached to games and will be read by the console. The tag will be matched with the user's account and stored on the tag, meaning every time the disc is used in the future, the tag will check to see if the ID's match. If the IDs do not match up, the game disc will not work.
Sony faced a fair amount of backlash for the patent, and is yet to reveal how they'll use it, if at all.
We'll all see what Sony has up their sleeve sometime next week.
