To be blunt I do not think even Natal will be the driver for the xbox360 going forward it just add's something that i think will add to the fun factor, yea natal has what seem's to me some great unique added function that developer's i would like see to take time and try it out on making game's for. what I do see is that the xbox360 is pretty robust in it's capability's there is 3 processing core's in that machine and each of those run's at 3.2 GHz . that is very powerful.

yes there is some tweak's to those processor's, they are RISC but that does not matter , it's made for game's anyway entertainment software.

there is still quite a bit for the developer's to work with for these machine's, not to mention xbox360 xboxlive with digital download;s of games and netflix. that one alone keep's movie buff's happy. along with that DLC for game's can increase the replayability of game's fallout 3 ring a bell..  I just do not think the developer's are getting anywhere near to the xbox360 being tapped.

this is the first time in History outside of a PC that i can remember that a CONSUMER Electronic device HAS MORE PROCESSING POWER than even some computer's

that's like a dvd player or DVR with this kind of processing power

not just the xbox360 the ps3 also, when was the last time you have seen a CONSUMER ELECTRONIC TOP SET BOX that has these capabilities.

these are Entertainment computer's and quite powerful at that.

I just do not see their viability ending anytime soon.

- Like I said, developers will figure out how to fit their games in the DVD no matter what. I doubt the PS3 will outsell the 360. But even if it did, it'll never make a profit. And for that reason the PS3 is unsuccessful.

- Cartridges were a different story. Not only were they an expensive form of media, they were more expensive depending on the amount of data they wanted to use. For example many games used 16MB carts. Larger cartridges like 64MB were more expensive and almost never used. DVD media is cheap and developers can use multiple discs if necessary. Using the N64 as a comparison is illogical.

- Clearly using DVDs wasn't a bad idea considering we've had 5 great years with them. Now storage is becoming an issue, but developers will most likely just start using multiple discs. The PS3 offered the latest technology but it was far too expensive and now its a huge financial failure. The PS3 is the only console this gen being sold at a loss and dropped 50% in price.

- The PS2 was a success, the original Xbox was not. What aren't you getting? The Xbox 360 is a success as well, there is no reason to compare it to the original Xbox.

I went maybe a little less. Though I think it can do 70 million. If as some are suggesting this generation will be somewhat longer than initial expectations then I can easily see 360 selling reasonably well (10 million +) for 3 years. At 39 million+ shipped already 360 is looking to be on target. But I wouldn't say yeah easily because MS may well come out with their next gen box earlier than 3 year's time and hence kill off any chance of 360 reaching 70 million.

The way i see it, killing off the xbox360 chances are very unlikely.

this generation has one of the best selling component's of the previous generation.

the

ROBUST ONLINE STRUCTURE

the very fact that these machine's have that capability make's them inline to be able to do a majority of the thing's the next system's will be able to do, yes somewhat at a slight to to lesser extent in running game's on the same quality but that's because the machine's will have more horse power, other than that since the xbox360's online structure will be just a robust as the new xbox there will be less of a reason to just drop it not just by microsoft but also consumer's. the new xbox when it get's released what price do you think it will be released at?

I think it will be inline with $400.00 launch price , because Microsoft will want to recoup their cost's as much as they can. that way the can still profit off of the xbox360

why only sell one unit if you can make a profit on a machine that will still be able to be a viable option for gamer's, just look at the PS2.

anymore you do not have to be the market leader to gather support. Even the ps3 being in last place in over all sale's still has a majority of support like the 1st place and 2nd place system's.To think with the xbox360 being popular as it is that somehow the system will be in so much decline in 3 year's is kind of short sighted. becuse it's still has alot of life in the system.

to many the IDEA o a generation lasting 10 year's is unthinkable, but if you look at all three companies history.

microsoft support's  the window's edition's for 10 year's, and now it seem's the xbox brand will join that support cycle!

sony support's their playstation brand each system is on a 10 year business plan. that has not changed since the days of the ps1.

"Kutaragi started out by reconfirming that the PS3 will be backward-compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games and will support high-definition TVs. "We're looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3."

Kutaragi- 2005

microsoft's windows OS support cycle:

an

an

even window's 98

The day of the short supported game system is In all likelyhood over, expect the system's to maintain extensive support over the long haul.

sell it for as long as you can. its worked for sony and Nintendo I think now Microsoft is joining the club.

the xbox360 Buisness plan my infact be 10 year's support. you sell over 35+ million in about 4 year's and it's still going. I just do not see support drying up for the system.

^^^ People form so many opinions based on original Xbox, which is a stupid thing to do, since they cherry pick what they want to focus on, for example...they will glad point out how M$ rushed the 360, and didn't do sufficient system engineering to determine the true MTBF of the console, and label the brand for that, while overlooking the fact that the original xbox was one of the sturdiest console ever made.

that outer caseing even though it was mainly plastic. that was some very hard plastic.

It had the best quality build out of all of those generation machines even more so than the game cube, and the game cube was a great machine, hell even still is.

ps2, xbox, and game cube was all great machines, I think this generation is all three machine's have onece again not disapointed me. now granted I do not own an xbox360 myself but i have access to one!

I will eventualy get one. though later.

The other thing about the previous xbox, is that M$ didn't have the correct contracts inplace, and would have never achieved the efficiencies necessary to keep production lines open, where as looking at the current Xbox 360, it is a 65nm chipset, going against the PS3's 45nm chipset...so just imagine how much cheaper it's going to be if M$ can get it down to that level or lower to 32nm...

yea.

but at a certain point though the bottom drop's out there is only so far you can go though, I recon $99.00 would be that rock bottom price point, at that  point  the xbox360 is pretty much  would be a disposible commodity. you can only get sofar before, your price per what the deveice does in this caase the xbox360 is worth more than $100.00 but I think many people would  see that Microsoft or any company would want to make as much money as they can, and at that point it's reasonable to see with all the stuff that the xbox360 can do asking  $100.00 for the xbox360 even 3 or 4 hell even 5+year's from now is not asking too much.

In my opinion

Yeah, I think the rockbottom for this generation is going to be $149, which I think the 360 will reach next year.

Assassin's Creed: 6.6 GB

Assassin's Creed 2: 5.2 GB

So it looks like the whole games get bigger with time thing isn't 100% true, I mean Assassin's Creed 2 is a better game than the first one AND uses 1.4 GBs less space

So yeah I think the xbox will be fine with DVD for another few years