Speaking at a Tokyo press conference this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO Ken Kutaragi dismissed speculation that Sony's next console would suffer a delay: "There has been some talk that development for a next generation game console has not been going well, but we will have a playable version ready by next spring." Kutaragi refused to speak about a potential launch date for Sony's new platform, but hinted that the console - as yet without an official name - would follow a similar schedule to previous Sony consoles, which would earmark a March 2006 release for Japan, October 2006 for North America and November 2006 for Europe.
Sony's announcement triggered fierce speculation that Microsoft are now increasingly likely to formally announce the follow-up to their Xbox console as early as this September, at the companys annual industry event for Europe, X04, with a first public showing pencilled in for March 2005, at the Game Developers Conference. This estimate would certainly fit in with Microsoft's constant assertion at E3 that they would "not be beaten to market" by either Sony or Nintendo.
As for Nintendo themselves, they've remained fairly quiet on today's big announcements, though Nintendo Europe reaffirmed that its Revolution console will be "discussed" in greater depth at the LA event in 2005 and released in a suitable timeframe that should enable the machine to compete effectively with PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2. Nintendo Europe's head of PR Shelly Pearce confirmed to eurogamer.net today that, "Our plan is to talk about our vision for Revolution at E3 next year, and how we're going to revolutionise console gaming. At next year's E3 there'll obvious be a lot more discussion about next generation, and we'll be talking about ways we're going to take console gaming forward without just focussing on graphics. But it's far too early to talk about specifics now."
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