Sony said we'd 'see the future' of PlayStation on February 20th, and it appears to be true: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company will not only reveal the next PlayStation at the event, but actually put the new video game console on sale later this year. According to the publication's anonymous sources, both the next PlayStation and Microsoft's next game system will compete head to head going into the holiday season.

Though Sony CEO Kaz Hirai and others had originally telegraphed that the next PlayStation might not be ready as soon as the next Xbox, it appears to have been a feint. We may see what the so-called PlayStation Orbis has to offer in as few as three weeks. In the meanwhile, you can pick through Sony's video teaser to see what could be our first glimpse at the game system.

Update: In an update, the Journal adds that Sony is planning to "incorporate more social gaming aspects into the new machine," and that the company is generally focused more on "changes in how users interact with the machine" rather than spec improvements. Reportedly, it will still have an optical drive, though the publication's anonymous sources say that Sony had considered removing it. As rumored in April, the Journal says that the console will likely use AMD processors for both CPU and GPU, which could make backwards compatibility with PS3 games — developed for the Cell processor architecture — difficult.