Various analysts have put on their boxing gloves and have gone straight for the jaw of Microsoft's Xbox 360, predicting a sharp decline for the console over the next twelve months.

A panel in Sweden for the Nordic Game 2008 conference full of all sorts of analysts were asked their opinions on the industry, and all predicted a rather bleak future for the Seattle giant, Eurogamer reports.

"The trouble with Xbox 360 is it hasn't managed to shake off this urban, irreverent adult male feel; so it hasn't gained traction in the more casual gaming markets of mainland Europe such as France, Spain and Italy, where it's stalled," said Nick Parker, boss of Parker Consulting and a former employee of Sony. "And there are already rumours of Xbox 360 being delisted from certain retailers. I think they started off badly with the Xbox itself: blood and breasts. This alienated it immediately to a lot of consumers around Europe, and they never got over that. The brand image never went away. And although Halo 3 is a big game, it just emphasises again what the Xbox is all about."

David Cole of DFC Intelligence had some equally harsh words to say, predicting a last place finish in the console wars.

"When you look at an installed base basis, the Xbox 360's going to come in third place when all's said and done. The concern I would have with a company like Microsoft is, one of these days they're going to have to make a profit on this business otherwise why are they in it?"

Despite this, Cole did note that publishers could have plenty of success on the 360 in certain genres - namely shooters, unsurprisingly.

"If you're doing a first-person shooter title, you're clearly going to want to be on Xbox 360, and that's for years to come. [But] their efforts at marketing outside of the first-person shooter crowd have been disastrous."

Cole suggested that Microsoft needed to find a way for Xbox to be profitable if they wanted to re-enter the market next generation.

"They will have to assess their position after this round, and clearly they were very committed to saying they were going to stick with this business through another console system. They haven't really talked much beyond that and I know that really at some point they are going to have to figure out how they're going to make money out of this business."

Thanks to the console's head start, the Microsoft has managed to shift 19 million Xbox 360s to the PS3's 12.85 million. Of course, Nintendo is miles in front with a staggering 24 million consoles sold.

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