THE BUZZ: Amid a swirl of internet rumors, and shortly after Sony insinuated they would not reveal new hardware this year themselves, Microsoft has said that nothing new will be seen from them in 2012 either.

EGM’S TAKE: In an interview with French website Lepoint.Fr, Cedrick Delmax, the Microsoft France Marketing Director, said (assumedly in French before being translated) that Microsoft is not looking to reveal new hardware this year.

“Xbox 360′s cycle is not at all finished. The proof is that we don’t see the logic in cutting the price this year. E3 is still premature. What’s certain is that there’ll be nothing new in 2012,” said Delmax specifically in his statement.

Saying that E3 is premature likely means that indeed a mid-June reveal as originally rumored is just that: a rumor. And that surely takes a 2012 hardware release off the shelf. But even if the new hardware wasn’t slated until 2013, the lack of a reveal must be disheartening for fans that were salivating at the thought of seeing something this year. Plus, it wouldn’t be out of character for Microsoft to promise big things in a distant future as they did the same thing with the Kinect by showing it off a couple years before its release. Thus, a 2012 E3 reveal did make sense to a lot of folks.

So, now with Sony saying they would be the last to announce something (to see all of what Sony said on the possibility of their new console, check out Matthew Bennett’s article here), the question now becomes is this a sick game of console chicken? Are both Microsoft and Sony just going to stand back to see who flinches first? Or is it more to see if Nintendo can pull themselves up by their bootstraps after disheartening sales over the past year, especially for the Wii, and if the Wii-U stumbles out of the gate, then announce something to go in for the kill? Or if the Wii-U works well, then steal some of Nintendo’s ideas and incorporate them into their own next-gen system for maybe a 2014 release? I think possibly a little from column A and a little column B in that case, but only time will tell in the end. Not to mention, this could all just be a red herring to try to keep our expectations low as sometimes Microsoft just can’t help themselves when they get a chance to steal the show at E3.

What do you folks think? Disappointed by the news? Is it a red herring? Do you think Nintendo’s plans are influencing either Sony or Microsoft? Let us know your thoughts with comments below!