Time to reach for your industrial-sized bag of salt again. Another hardware rumour has emerged, this time supposedly detailing the preliminary specs of the PlayStation 4. If the specs are to be believed, Sony will forgo a massive technological leap in favour of keeping costs down and getting to market in the not massively distant future.

Before we go any further, the official line: Sony, for its part, says it, "Does not comment on rumour and speculation".

If the specs are real, however, the PS4 as it's planned now will be no more than twice as powerful as the PS3. Similarly, it will work with the existing Cell architecture rather than featuring something new. Further to that, XDR memory will be dropped in favour of standard JEDEC RAM.

The specs were supposedly sent out to Japanese developers in order to get some feedback, then leaked to Japanese site PC Watch.

It would seem that the days of technical one-upmanship may be coming to an end...

Sony also, apparently, has a 2011 deadline for getting the console out and plans to beat the next Xbox to market. That fits loosely with the recent opining of Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, who said that the PS4 would likely be out by 2012.

It doesn't fit quite so well, however, with Sony's intention to have a 10 year lifespan for the PS3 - which should take the current console through to 2016. While having the current console on the shelf for ten years doesn't preclude a new one coming out in the meantime, a 2011 release would be a full five years before that.

As we said, keep that salt handy...

^{Source: PC Watch via NeoGAF}