Why Xbox 360 won't lose support anytime soon

[Adinnieken]

d21lewis said:

Adinnieken said:

The premis of the OP is flawed.

The Xbox 360 won't lose support anytime soon because the user base for the Xbox 360 is over 75m strong.  Microsoft isn't going to have 75m consoles sold in one week, let alone one year.  So, developers will still need to create games for the Xbox 360 as well as the next Xbox.

The same, by the way, is true for the PS3 and the Wii.  The difference is that the PS3 has third-party support.

 

Oh, it's definitely flawed.  It's just that there are those who say that the 360 will lose support once a successor is released because the original Xbox lost support as soon as the 360 was released.  It looks like Microsoft will stand by the 360 for at least two more years.  I'm a believer in patterns/histories repeating themselves but, after only one previous generation, there isn't really much of a pattern to look for, yet.

Yeah, the first Xbox wasn't indicative of how Microsoft does business. 

Microsoft has a chart on their site of how they support products.  Generally, they support Version A for a period of years after Version B is released.  I'm guessing you already know the reasons why Microsoft ceased support of the Xbox a year after the Xbox 360 was released, but for those who don't it was because the agreement between NVidia and Microsoft ended and they weren't going to be getting any new GPUs.  It's hard to continue selling a product when you don't have GPUs. 

I suspect Microsoft would have continued selling the original Xbox had there been the opportunity.