No, it doesn’t; some companies like Microsoft are very open; their employees have public blogs and their execs frequently release news, strategy, and commentary to the public. The public is typically well aware of their products during development and beta realease stages well before a final release.

Other companies like Apple and Sony are ultra-secret about products and strategy and often don’t make a sound about a product until it is actually ready to ship. Often, they will bring a product through development, QA, and manufacturing, and surprise the public when they announce a shipping product that the public was completely unaware of.

Personally, as a consumer, I prefer the former strategy; I wish we knew what was going on. But with a secretive company like Sony, no news isn’t necessarily bad news.

Sony has been historically good about meeting deadlines. They said PS3 will launch in “Spring”. I assume this means the end of spring: June 20 is the last day of Spring. And I assume that means a Japan first launch as they normally do with U.S. and Europe releases several months later.

And my own personal opinion: when it does launch later this year, it will have really amazing games and blow the 360 away! I can’t wait to see the new Gran Turismo, I8, the dozens of other amazing titles that will get released, and my biggest hope: just maybe… a new PS3 GTA!

I guess this puts the ps3 launch solidly into the fall however, but the qquestion is if they’re not doing a worldwide launch a la microsoft, when does it launch in japan, and how much lead time? It can’t launch before the first blu-ray players I’m assuming which puts it at best summer in Japan.