Sony Corp will this month host its first major Playstation meeting in two years, sparking a flare-up in online speculation the Japanese consumer electronics giant is preparing to unveil the successor to its 70 million-selling PS3 games console.<\/p>\n
Sony declined to say whether it would release a new product at the meeting in New York on February 20. “We will be talking about the Playstation business,” spokesman Masaki Tsukakoshi said on Friday. A Google search for “Sony Feb 20 Playstation” returned more than 7 million hits.<\/p>\n
The last time Sony held a Playstation event, in January 2011, it presented a protoype of its handheld Vita console. Before that, it convened a gathering in 2005 two months after it first demonstrated the PS3 concept. A meeting in 1999 revealed designs for the PS2.<\/p>\n
It has been more than six years since Sony launched the PS3 home console, a longer gap than between it and its PS2 predecessor, adding to the anticipation that it will soon disclose its next gaming concept.<\/p>\n
Since Sony’s last home console launch, the games market has been transformed by the boom in smartphones and tablet computers that have wooed players with free or cheap games.<\/p>\n
Sony and other console makers Nintendo Co Ltd and Microsoft Corp now have to contend with competition from hand-held devices made by Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics and others.<\/p>\n
Analysts expect that tablets and other mobile devices will match the power and graphics of today’s games consoles within a few years.<\/p>\n
Struggling under competitive pressure, Nintendo on Wednesday cut its sales target for the Wii U, successor to its 100 million-selling Wii, to 4 million machines by the end of March from its launch in November, compared with an earlier forecast for 5.5 million.<\/p>\n
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