Finishing the fight? Perhaps not. 343's Frank O'Connor reckons Xbox 360 has a long, prosperous future ahead of it even after next generation consoles arrive. Providing it gets a price cut, anyway.
"The funny thing is I've been asked that question a lot, I think it's natural as we start looking forward to the next generation of hardware," O'Connor told GamesIndustry yesterday. "But I would actually strongly contest the fact that the Xbox 360 is at the end of its life cycle, this has already been one of the longest generations and there's a really good reason for it, which is that current consoles are incredibly flexible and still really powerful. The reason that Halo 4 looks good is that that machine has an awful lot of untapped power still and it's going to continue to."
"Not just becoming the little brothers like cast offs, but still being your Netflix player, still being you DVD player, your Blu-ray player in the case of the PS3, and still doing really vital things around your house. And that means if people are still using it they're still going to want gaming experiences on it."
"I would say that I expect this generation will last a lot more years. Now you've got your hardcore fans who are going to look at that statement and say 'but I want new hardware.' We know new hardware is going to come, it always does, but I think the utility of the older consoles is going to last longer than ever before."
Just as well, really, if there's any substance to nVidia's recent claim that next generation consoles will be the last generation of consoles. Xbox 720 is hotly rumoured to launch in 2013.
1 comments so far...
Waffles2541 on 4 Oct '12 said:
I remember when the PS3 came out. They continued to make PS2 games well after its release, probably knowing that there was still money in it. They will probably do the same with the Xbox 360, but for a tad longer. After all there are some features that were only recently added to it and i bet they aren't willing to switch it off immediately when the 720 comes out