Hasta La Gadget!

The war for your living room is about to heat up. While Microsoft is still keeping its own next-generation console under lock and key, rival Sony is gearing up to take the stage in New York City and show off exactly what it’s been working on for the past few years. Naturally, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing starting at 6PM Eastern/3PM Pacific tonight.

Like nearly every other major hardware release in recent memory, the PlayStation 4 (or whatever it’s going to be called) has been the subject of scads of questionable rumors and clandestine leaks. Curious code name? Check. Preliminary glimpses at hardware? Check. Unnerving (and hopefully unfounded) reports that the console won’t play nice with used games? Sadly, check.

Even now, the rumor mill persists — Sony may push its next-gen console out the door as soon as November (with the ability to control it via smartphone, no less) if a new report from Kotaku holds water. Still, for while we know (or think we know) about Sony’s plans for tonight, expect the company to whip out a few surprises to keep the masses planted firmly on the edge of their seats.

That said, at this point it seems highly unlikely that Sony will pull back the curtain on everything it’s working on, if only because of its sketchy track record with keeping promises made on stage. One need only look at the company’s original PS3 announcement to see that some of the experiences that Sony promised it would bring to the table just haven’t materialized (or at least, haven’t materialized in the way we had hoped).

Either way, Sony’s little shindig in Gotham tonight is going to be one to worth listening in on. To stay abreast on all of Sony’s big announcements, keep your eyes on our PlayStation Meeting event tag here.