Several of our friends in the development community in North America are telling us Sony has reached out to them to schedule meetings around the upcoming PlayStation 4.

The developers tell us that these meetings will take place in the May to June time frame when the unit will be revealed to developers. It is now believed that Sony could be positioning itself to ship the PlayStation 4 ahead of the release of the Xbox Next/720.

Rumors suggest that Microsoft will be sticking to a 2013 holiday season release plan. Of course, that could change if it looks that Sony is going to get the jump on Microsoft this time around.