Next Xbox Not Coming Any Time Soon

Keane Ng

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Next Xbox Not Coming Any Time Soon



Though Microsoft didn't even wait five years to jump from Xbox 1 to 360, the company plans to sit on its current breadwinner for the foreseeable future.

Instead of making the leap to another piece of hardware, Microsoft plans to focus on improving the 360's games and features, specifically Xbox Live, President interview [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rbach/] with the San Jose Mercury News.

Having witnessed the monumental success of the technologically inferior Wii, Bach seems to believe that the pursuit of more technologically advanced hardware has ended and the next generation of consoles will have to do more than simply push pixels. "Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient," Bach said. "The life cycle for this generation - and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PS3 as well - is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations."

Building a product that has value beyond its technological power is especially important in the light of the world's current economic woes. Since money's tight for everyone these days, selling a new console to consumers right now would be difficult, Bach believes. "When you look at consumers, they are going to be more value-conscious," Bach said. In the end, putting out a new console might be mostly a matter of waiting for the right time. "We want to make sure that as the economy does start to recover, that we're positioned as well." So if Microsoft's got anything in the works (and they probably do), they'll be sitting on it until this whole recession thing starts to right itself. Hope that it does, because it might mean the difference between this generation of games and the next.

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fix-the-spade

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Breadwinner? I thought the 360 was costing them vast quantities of bread, even more bread than the first one.
 

Anton P. Nym

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fix-the-spade said:
Breadwinner? I thought the 360 was costing them vast quantities of bread, even more bread than the first one.
Nope. It'll take a long time to fill the hole already dug by development costs and that billion-dollar RRoD write-down, but last time I checked the 360 seemed to be making a profit on software sales and breaking even on hardware.

-- Steve
 

stompy

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Anton P. Nym said:
last time I checked the 360 seemed to be making a profit on software sales and breaking even on hardware.

-- Steve
They make a marginal profit on the hardware sales, if I remember correctly.

As for the article, I'm glad that Microsoft has caught onto the idea that graphics aren't the 'big seller' for video games. Hopefully, Sony does the same, and we can get more dev time being focused on the gameplay and story.
 

Corven

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Sep 10, 2008
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Well, this is good to know, I was a little worried when I bought the 360 a month ago, that they would drop it for the Nextbox, and I would be out all of my money I saved to buy it.
 

cleverlymadeup

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Anton P. Nym said:
fix-the-spade said:
Breadwinner? I thought the 360 was costing them vast quantities of bread, even more bread than the first one.
Nope. It'll take a long time to fill the hole already dug by development costs and that billion-dollar RRoD write-down, but last time I checked the 360 seemed to be making a profit on software sales and breaking even on hardware.

-- Steve
not sure if it makes a profit or not but it's not losing money. but as you said it will take a while to fill the crater they made with the money loss from the original xbox and the rrod and all that fun, i do know the 360 was first sold at a loss

as for the article i'd have to say that they'll release something new soon, they'll have to keep up with the capabilities of the blu-ray disc in the ps3 as i'm sure at one point games on both systems will have different resolutions and effects due to disc limitations of the dvd-9 standard the 360 uses
 

jamesworkshop

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for movies deffinatly but games no, Crysis came on a single dual layer DVD and has far better graphics and resolutions than what the ps3 supports despite the size difference in media
 

captain awesome 12

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jamesworkshop said:
for movies deffinatly but games no, Crysis came on a single dual layer DVD and has far better graphics and resolutions than what the ps3 supports despite the size difference in media
Yes, but in order to run it you have to spend massive amounts of cash on a PC with enough power. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the draw of Blu Ray the amount of space on the disc than its graphical prowess since the difference between it and standard definition is so incredibly marginal?
 

jamesworkshop

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captain awesome 12 said:
jamesworkshop said:
for movies deffinatly but games no, Crysis came on a single dual layer DVD and has far better graphics and resolutions than what the ps3 supports despite the size difference in media
Yes, but in order to run it you have to spend massive amounts of cash on a PC with enough power. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the draw of Blu Ray the amount of space on the disc than its graphical prowess since the difference between it and standard definition is so incredibly marginal?

blu ray is just a high density optical storage medium it has nothing to do with computer game graphics however because movies are just a series of individual images you can fit more and larger resolution images than on standard DVD's.
Unrelated to the storage medium but yes crysis does require a decent machine to achieve those graphical settings.

Indigo_Dingo said:
I thought Crysis was on multiple discs, like nearly every computer game for a long stretch of time.
Crysis was 6.5GB and warhead was 6.9GB so either could fit on the DVD9 that xbox uses
 

SomeBritishDude

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stompy said:
Anton P. Nym said:
last time I checked the 360 seemed to be making a profit on software sales and breaking even on hardware.

-- Steve
They make a marginal profit on the hardware sales, if I remember correctly.

As for the article, I'm glad that Microsoft has caught onto the idea that graphics aren't the 'big seller' for video games. Hopefully, Sony does the same, and we can get more dev time being focused on the gameplay and story.
Thats probley not what they mean. What they really mean is Xboxmote and Xchuck.
 

Anton P. Nym

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Indigo_Dingo said:
Since when has story ever sold well?
You realise I might just use that quote of yours against you the next time you cite MGS4 as a reason to buy the PS3, right?

-- Steve
 

AceDiamond

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Anton P. Nym said:
Indigo_Dingo said:
Since when has story ever sold well?
You realise I might just use that quote of yours against you the next time you cite MGS4 as a reason to buy the PS3, right?

-- Steve
Pfah, nobody buys MGS4 for the story, they buy it for the OMG shiny graphics and gun customization! What's a story!?

*the preceding was sarcasm*
 

PhoenixFlame

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This is good to hear, that there won't be a knee-jerk reaction to upgrade to other hardware and that Microsoft plans to stick by its console for a while. The problem I had the last time was that I bought an XBox relatively late in the lifecycle, and being cautious about the 360 as well (I gotta pay the bills, after all), I was afraid I'd be picking up one right when they'd be crafting another to take its place.

I'm a PS3 and Wii owner, but I envy the library of titles the 360 has.