You must be new to this thread. It wouldn't be the first time Sony said something, the did something else later. Developers do it ALL the time.
Oh wait a minute, are you the same person that said Sony has not announced the PS4 yet? Cant remember who it was but someone in here kept going on and on about how they still have not announced the PS4 yet.
Yeah, the thing is you need to prove an instance where Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple or another hardware maker has officially denied a 'leaked' design - something they'd obviously be 100% sure of - and later changed their mind. You might be talking about the withdrawal of certain software features (like the OtherOS thing) or terms of service, but stuff like that is trivial; they can't read the future. However, we know that they definitely know what the PS4 will look like right now.
Developers run out of time, money and all that, but at the end of the day the audience for any given game is much smaller than the audience for any given console so they're generally a lot more disposable than a console with a ten year life cycle.
Sony have to play it by the book, especially given their financial situation; I'd be astonished if they decided to take some unprecedented new approach just to generate some hype, which wouldn't even work this way. Fan-made concepts surface all over the place when a new console is due and all it takes for them to be ignored completely is for the manufacturer in question to say 'no, that's fake'. Then everyone thinks it's just another fan-made concept and pay it no mind at all. If Sony hadn't commented on it at all, then the media would be suspicious;
that's how you generate hype.
But anyway, Sony have a lot riding on the PS4 and if they were to make their customers or, more importantly, the media feel deceived that could really backfire. I'm sure you're aware of the power the press has when it comes to public opinion, you don't want to piss them off when you need them to help sell your product.
And no, you're thinking of USSR. Give me
some credit, Jeez...
