The only reason for the small YoY drop in 2009* and in January this year is that the X360 hasn't dropped in price since Sept 5 in 2008 (that's one week short of 18 months!) while the competition dropped from $399 to $299 combined with a Slim hardware revision stealing significant marketshare.

There are no signs of the market slowing down, at least not for the X360. And your "threat of a new generation looming for 2011" is false.

*And yet the X360 managed to sell 10.2 million consoles.

People think it's daunting, until you start looking at how the console needs to perform on a per/annum basis to see that it's not totally out of reach...as you estimated, alot depends on Natal's reception to the public...if it takes off as M$ wants it to, chances are this generation is going to be 1-2 years longer, so We'd see a new console in late 2012 as at the earliest.

I would say a resounding yes....my reason's why
developer's having to take extra time because of multi-core development take's longer, an even if there is a new xbox it would be the same, "MULTI-CORE" development with less install base, and the developer's would still need to recoup their cost they already spent investing in the tool's for the development of the xbox360. they want as much money with less investment for new tools for the next xbox than instead of mainly still develop for the xbox360 when in all likelyhood they still have unrecovered cost still left over even yet today. this has been one expensive generation for 3rd party, outside of just Microsoft.

an
then there is quite a bit of horse power left inside of the xbox360 to be tapped not including developer's tweaking of their game engine's. There is still quite a bit of development for the xbox360 that can net much greater result's. yes there is some instances where it's hardware is being taxed but that also mean's, that on the same token that the developer has yet to tweak their engine which many developer's have already stated, they can get better result's for the xbox360 its not even close yet to be anywhere fully tapped in my opinion.

still another point:
this generation is still in it's infancy stage, what i mean it is not like previous generation's.
a) this hardware gap in its overall strength between the first xbox an the xbox360 is quite a bit, from the processor to the GPU
just by that point alone it would have much higher level of support for software development due to developer's main development platform for the xbox brand have been mainly PC, which also mean those very same Developer's the majority of them have only just started Multi-core software development due to game's being made with single core being the most idea because many consumer's have just recently in the past few year's have only had the option of multi-core processor in the PC at a price that is more market friendly, thus most every game for the PC has been single core designed.
Only this Time EVERY xbox360 is multi-core, now look at that vs' the number of PC's out there and you can see by today's standard's the game console, this generation has been one to be inline to be upto date as the level of development that would be the same for PC's.

so there is no doubt in my mind barring any big problem's for the sale's decline of the xbox360 demand to dwindle , that the xbox360 could get upto 70+ million world wide, hell it's only been released in 21 countries sofar there is still places for the xbox360 to be released into so they also too can join in the fun of having one of the best game system's out there.
It would in my opinion make it up to , I would say 80 to 100+ million LTD number's because this generation I think this is only going to extend this generation much longer than previous generation's because there is so much more that these system's are capable of than previous generation's I see it as there is still more time for the platform to grow in it's maturity that 5-7 year's is still to little of time to get the most out of its hardware.

Ha ha then ur new consoles coming out in 2012 will be wrong i see new consoles coming out in 2014

yes it will sell over 70 no more than 80m though ps3 will pass 100m b4 its off the market

all it has to do is sell an average of like 8m for the next 4-5 years very doable considering that the elite sku hasnt reached 199$ and the arcade hasnt reached 99$ yet

I think the xbox360 has a good chance to pass the 80+ million mark though , but yea there is a very good chance with Natal being released, you may see a tweaked xbox360 with natal to provide a middle of the cycle than a whole new xbox , though I guess we will just have to see how thing's turn out. though a 75+ million world wide is not out of the question for the xbox360.

They could barely fit Assassin's Creed on a DVD 2 years ago...2 years later they can only fit games on a DVD because they're using insane amounts of compression. In 2 years it will be impossible to produce any games on the 360. It's using PS2 technology from the year 2000. It is at 40million right now, so unless it can sell 30 million consoles in 2 years then it won't hit 70 million.

Its already more than half where there and the 360 still has five years to go. The console will also see a nice boost after the next price drop.

Its amazing to see the 360 will surpass the NES and SNES. And its not even the first place console this gen.

And logic like that is why people thought the Wii will fail.

To hit 70 million the 360 just need to maintain the same sales for about 3 or 4 years. MS said they plan to support the 360 until 2015 and there will be price drops. So 70 million should be easy regardless of how the Natal does.

The Wii isn't HD and doesn't need all that space....  Im not sure if you were trying to refute my original point though.

It's like buying a two seat sports car and you're planing on having kids in the next few years...it's not going to last long enough.  When HD games require over 15GB of space in a few years the 360 will be out of comission....and the PS3 will have outsold it giving the 3rd party little reason to support games under the 7GB mark.  In my opinion the 360 has 2 years at best.  There is no way the 360 will sell 30 million in 2 years.