http://www.siliconvalley.com/personal-technology/ci_15820467

Microsoft will continue to offer the Xbox 360 for five years, expanding the life span of the console to 10 years, said Chris Lewis, vice president for interactive entertainment business in Europe.

Well, he can't say next xbox is coming out in couple of years - buying the new slim would be a waste.

that is if kinect gives momentum to the 360 for the next 5 years.

The PS2 is still alive and kicking. I could easily see the 360 still sell consoles for a few years after the next Xbox console.

Or do you mean new software releases?

I don't think Kinect will provide the kind of push in sales Microsoft is hoping for, but I think it will accomplish something.  They do need to appeal to hardcore crowd more with it, though.

Anyway, I sincerely hope that the Xbox360 and PS3 both last for at least 10 years.  For once, I'd like to see the industry actually wait until it's actually logical to make the move to a new generation.  Notice that I didn't mention the Wii.  I think that a follow-up to that is probably sooner on the horizon than replacements to the Xbox360 and PS3.  The next system will likely just put it in a similar league with the HD consoles, meaning there's no reason for MS or Sony to jump to the next stage.

There's still a helluva lot of room for expansion and growth in this generation--and I'm extremely pleased to see Microsoft and Sony looking to expand the lifespans of their machines rather than jumping ahead prematurely.  I still believe this current generation was started about two years too soon, which is why so many companies struggled so severely during the change.  Nobody was really ready for it. 

The longer this generation lasts, the better prepared we'll be for the next one.

Dear god I hope so and not really as a 360 fan so much as a video game fan.  I'm pretty convinced if new consoles launch too early we are going to see a major gaming fallout.  People are just beginning to really afford all this HD goodness and jumping new systems out the gate within the next 2 years will kill the industry in terms of home consoles. 

Portables is a completely different story, the 3DS is making perfect timing.

not next to the psp.. sure it's dead, but as a platform the psp came out ahead of its time

Im sure the next gen of consoles are on the way, maybe next fall will have an announcement of the 720/PS4/Wii HD

deja vu and garnett is going to quote me...

I really think Kinect is going to do extraordinarily well for Microsoft. Just the fact that my girlfriend is totally up for it and my Grandma is really excited about it, tells me that they have found something really special in Kinect. I'm even more excited about the potential for games to include Kinect along with a 360 controller. That could open up the doors to a whole new level of immersion.

So basically, when Kinect comes out, it will sell like crazy, thus giving the 360 a lot longer shelf life.

The answer to this is on the front page of the site right now. If people weren't interested in the Xbox 360 then the Xbox 360 revision wouldn't have recieved such an unprecedented boost. Its really as simple as that. Whilst people are still interested in the Xbox 360, Microsoft will continue to make them, continue to sell them and continue to reap Xbox Live revenue and software royalties. This is especially true if the next Xbox comes in at a higher $300-400 entry level price. It wouldn't hurt them to also sell the Xbox 360 alongside for $150 to target a different market entirely, just as it hasn't hurt Sony to sell PS2's after more than 10 years.