No chance that 2012 will hold the next XBox. There are several reasons why...
1. Have you noticed that no matter what, if Sony or Microsoft even sneeze, the gaming news knows about it because they have a dozen insiders who run off to tell anyone and anything to the news sites? So far, there has been no patents, no posts about needing technical people, no designs for new technology...absolutely nothing that has been leaked so far, despite the fact that it almost always ends up leaked.
2. The 360 is still making a mint for them. By now, they are already using technology that is cheap enough that they are actually making money off each console. Microsoft is a business. As long as their product is still selling a lot, they're not going to touch that, for fear that they think their money train will crash. Just as with Sony, it would be monumentally stupid to suddenly switch gears and make another new console, yet again with technology that will probably cost them more than the console sells for, when the first is still selling well and will probably do so easily for quite a long time.
3. Where, exactly, are they going to go with the next XBox console? 1080p, like the PS3? Sure, they could do that. 3D? Sadly, that will probably be added too. Toss a Blu-Ray player in there? Could work. But pretty much everything else? Not a lot to shoot for now. They've basically topped out the capabilities without getting into neural uplinks that actually put you into the game. We've reached an echelon of technology that we can see individual eyelashes on a character's face and probably how they interact with a wind coming from a specific direction. Realistic clothing, once considered one of the single hardest things to really do well, is now done in spades. Kinect is a step they're taking. Until they figure out the next one, there's not going to be a new console from anyone out there (except maybe Nintendo).
