It has been speculated recently that Microsoft would attempt to finally reveal their newest Xbox to the public sometime in May, but now it appears Sony is attempting to steal the company's thunder with their own May announcement. This rumor comes from a source reporting to PCMag, who is allegedly privy with Sony's marketing plans.
The company may be doing so as a way to deflate Microsoft's planned next-gen Xbox reveal, which is now rumored to take place May 21 instead of in April. With the Game Developers Conference over with, Sony lost the last big industry event to have a big release for the PlayStation 4, unless they put on their own event for the console. That now appears to be the strategy Sony is following, as they pulled off a similar event in February to unveil the PlayStation 4 for the first time.
E3 shall take place June 9-11, so the timing of these events would indicate that both companies would be trying to drum up interest in their respective consoles before the event, instead of going to the biggest industry event of the year and revealing new details about the consoles then.
At the Game Developers Conference last week, Sony revealed a few new details about the PlayStation 4, but did not have much about the actual console, only new details about the Dualshock 4 and changes to PlayStation Network accounts.
The actual release date is unknown at this time for the PlayStation 4, but a 2013 holiday release is Sony's goal. GameStop executive Michael Hogan did indicate that Sony may be planning a global launch of the system, so the release date for the system may not be staggered like in the past. More news about the supposed PlayStation 4 should be forthcoming in the following weeks.