I'm not a hardcore PC gamer then, i do not plan to upgrade anything until i need to. I built my current PC in 2009 and i can still run every game out there with everything maxed out in 1080p. The only thing i upgraded since then was my video card. It was "leaked" in a similar report by eurogamer. According to the leaked information the PS4 (called Orbis for now) will have a similar CPU also made by AMD, with 8 cores and the same clock speed as the one in Durango, 4GB DDR4 RAM (with 512mb dedicated to the OS) instead of the 8GB DDR3 in Durango (with 2GB dedicated to the OS), and a GPU based on the HD7970M with slightly reduced processing units and clock speeds. If all the information turns out to be true, then the GPU on the PS4 will be faster than the next-Xbox. The next-Xbox will have more memory, but it will be much slower than the one on the PS3 (DDR4 against DD3). The CPU will be pretty much the same thing.

These specs are not bad at all, and the production costs should not be that high according to eurogamer.

Ubi last year claimed watchdogs was coming to this gen btw

It isn't that easy, they have to fit too many things into one board, this is not a PC. Also, PCs and consoles work in a very different way, consoles don't need as much memory as a PC. Consoles have a few design advantages over PCs, they're dedicated gaming machines, they can produce better-looking games with lower specs than a PC. Consoles don't have Windows as a overhead.

The PS2 had 32MB RAM for fuck's sake, and look at how many gorgeous games it could run. There is no way a PC with 32MB RAM can achieve the same quality of the games on the PS2. Wait, WHAT? The Kinect sold millions, it's basically printing money for Microsoft, which is why it will certainly be featured on the next-Xbox. The PS Move might have been a bit of a failure, but the Kinect wasn't, at least sales wise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect

"After selling a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days, the Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the "fastest selling consumer electronics device".[18][19][20] 18 million units of the Kinect sensor had been shipped as of January 2012.[1]"

The Kinect is certainly the most successful console add-on ever released.

While I do remember seeing somewhere that the "XBox 720" and the "PS4" were going x86, it still is interesting that they've switched away from PPC. I wonder if it's because AMD gave them a better deal, or perhaps IBM didn't have anything compelling to show them (since AFAIK, they've focused their PPC development on Big Iron CPUs like the Power 5).

With current system architecture and CPU design being what it is now, I'd imagine that the processing overhead from translating PPC to x86 code would be trivial. After all, it's what Rosetta on OS X has been doing for years. Then again, with business practices being what they are now, I'd fully expect Sony and MS to "solve" the backwards compatibility issue with a streaming service. For a fee of course. :)

I doubt it. Both the Durango and the Orbis have a completely different architecture than their predecessors. Not to mention that the Cell CPU is complex as hell. It won't happen.

What's interesting to me is that both the PS4 and XBox 720 will use AMD chips. I don't know how much AMD can 'profit' from that, but it's certainly a good thing for them.

Awe-SOME!!!

A touchscreen seems like such an obvious idea... now that someone's thought of it. It can be a keyboard and mouse in one. Amongst other things. But Nintendo's implementation doesn't seem that impressive and neither is the third party support. I could be more optimistic, but in the console market if you don't start strong you don't finish at all.

But yes, massive potential for touchsceens as I/O devices.

Do you seriously believe there will be a huge increase in system specs all of a sudden? These things take time. Even PC hardware hasn't changed that much from 2009 until now. Recent CPUs and GPUs are not that much faster than those back there.
Play a few games first before judging it. The Gamepad offers plenty of new gameplay options never seen before, especially in local multiplayer games. Nintendo Land clearly shows that. It has a lot of potential, much more than the Wiimote, in my opinion. The Wiimote was a good idea, but it has always been extremely imprecise without a Motion+ attached.

Non-gaming related aspects? On a console? What madness is this?

You would also think in theory (at least) it would mean the consoles would be cheaper than if it use the more expensive Intel cpu chips right?.
Not that there's been many anyway and since xbox had a fairly large userbase to start off with, as long as the addon was half decent (and gimmicky sells) then it meant guaranteed good sales..

Probably depends on the game. I certainly needed an upgrade to run Oblivion back in the day.

Consoles have had tons of peripherals, the NES alone probably had 20.

Yeah it's not like they've had modem's, memory expansions, card readers, disc drives, guitars, drums, keyboards, bongo drums... console addons are common, well selling ones not so.