Xbox Addict

Xbox 360 is Midway through its Lifecycle

 
Chris Lewis, Xbox EMEA vice president, revealed the company’s opinion during an interview. Lewis was asked whether the 360 is growing into the latter stages of its lifecycle. Lewis responded by stating that it’s only half way through:

"We see it as about halfway through. But yes you are right, Xbox is defying the normal curve you might expect. There’s no doubt that Kinect put a huge shot of adrenaline into the business. What we are now seeing is massive swathes of families and younger audiences flocking to it. As you saw at the press conference, we are now in line with what we projected at E3 2010."

The admission is less than surprising. Microsoft revealed at E3 this year that the company is planning to introduce a number of new features to its console user interface. Building on the strong adoption of Kinect, the software giant is building in Kinect support across the entire dashboard and voice Bing search. Microsoft will also introduce subscription live TV services later this year and a range of applications for the Xbox 360.

Microsoft is known to be in the early stages of preparing a new Xbox console. The software giant has managed to keep the Xbox 360, released in November 2005, fresh through a number of software improvements and hardware refreshes. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console dominated U.S. charts in 2010. Microsoft revealed at CES in January that the company has sold over 50 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide since launch. Microsoft also has 30 million active Xbox LIVE members and has sold 10 million Kinect sensors since the device debuted in November. The Kinect sensor is a horizontal bar that sits at the base of your TV. The device has an RGB camera, depth sensor and multi-array microphone which runs proprietary software. Kinect allows for full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition.

Microsoft’s Xbox Console Architecture team has also been hiring for numerous positions on the next-generation Xbox team. The job listings appears to have confirmed that Microsoft is in the early stages of pre-production for the next-generation Xbox. Microsoft is so early on in the development stages that the graphics hardware hasn’t been fully decided and tested. Previous speculation had suggested that Microsoft was further on in the development stages for its next-generation console.