BitMob's reporter Rus McLaughlin believes that the source from Sony is reputable and trustworthy, but has his doubts over whether the company is likely to launch a PlayStation 4 on the world within the next 18 months.

I'm inclined to agree, vagueness of the statement and the source aside. The PS3 launched in 2006, putting it roughly five years into Sony's much-publicized ten year cycle. Its predecessor, the PS2, launched in 2000 and is still just about limping along today, eleven years later. Several publishers, including 2K Sports, are still putting out PS2 versions of their new titles, and the fact the console is cheap certainly doesn't hurt its sales -- particularly when you take the huge back catalog of titles into account.

In fact, arguably the only real reasons that the PS2 isn't the leading console are the advent of HD and the growth of online console gaming. Standard definition graphics certainly don't stop a game from being great, as anyone who has played Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii will tell you. Some may see the lack of constantly being bugged by online notifications and Achievements as a good thing, allowing the player to focus their attention on the game itself, rather than the metagame. And you certainly don't have to worry about and on the PS2.

Then there's also the fact that the PS3 is arguably starting to hit its stride. While it has always trailed somewhat behind the Xbox 360 in Western territories, Sony's products have always enjoyed strong performance in Japan, and this year in particular sees a wide range of exclusive PS3 titles which may well prove to be system sellers -- chief among which is Uncharted 3, but it's also worth taking more niche titles like Dust 514 into account too.

And this isn't even considering the fact that there's no real for new tech at this point -- TVs that accept pictures of higher than 1080p resolution are several years away at this point, and even further away for mainstream acceptance. Meanwhile, 3DTVs are still treated with suspicion and skepticism by the public right now. So all that could be feasibly improved within 18 months would be graphical performance and frame rates at current resolutions -- and that might not be a big enough jump in fidelity to convince people that a new system is worthwhile. Unless Sony wants to go down the virtual reality route -- which, as Nintendo will tell them, is probably not a great idea.