With the announcement of the Wii U at E3 as well as persistent rumours that Microsoft are working on a successor to the Xbox 360 you could be forgiven for thinking that Sony are already working hard on the PlayStation 4. According to Sony SCEA President Jack Tretton though this is not the case.

In a recent interview with Forbes Mr. Tretton is quoted as saying, “PlayStation 3 is really just hitting its stride. And technologically, I don’t think it’s possible to provide any advancement beyond what we have. What we’ve seen from the competition is trying to add features that already exist in PlayStation 3. We invested heavily in that, we rolled a very heavy rock up a steep hill, through the launch period. But now I think that all pays off, and we’ve got a long run way behind it. So, I wouldn’t look for any discussion of a next generation PlayStation for quite some time.”

When asked about Sony’s feelings to the announcement of the Wii U he replied, “I think there’s ground to be carved out for everybody. But I didn’t see anything about Nintendo’s announcement that said ‘Oh, we’d better get working on rolling out a new PlayStation here pretty soon.’ Our attitude is kind of ‘welcome to the party.’ If you’re looking at being a multimedia entertainment device, if you’re looking at high def gaming, that was 2006 for us.”

It would seem that Mr. Tretton and Sony are still very confident in the hardware they have in the PlayStation 3. When the PS3 was released Sony said that it would have a ten year life span. Given that it first became available in 2006 that would mean that a PlayStation 4 probably won’t arrive until roughly 2016.