Here's an out-there monkey-wrench:

Low-power consoles become the rage in a few years, as energy prices skyrocket. You might expect a low-power 360 to be on the market a loooong while before a new one shows. Presumably, as nations around the world convert to 100% electric vehicles and engines, power-demands from non-fossil sources will increase dramatically.

The Wii is pretty much the only console set to evolve to a Wii-2, given its 18W consumption in its current form. Even the slim PS2 is still 45W. The amount of wattage your console uses will become a heckuva lot more important when the power companies start charging 10-20x (or more) for power usage over a soft cap, or just plain limit the amount of wattage a home can utilize at once, or monthly. No one is going to turn off their refrigerator to turn on a XBox720. Until its at least < 100W, there's a possibility that no one will even consider buying such a beast. Even the 360 has some serious shrinkage to do to reach that.

Since M$ major market is in the US, which is probably going to have the hardest time converting from non-fossil fuels in the short-term, M$ would be foolish to not look to the less power-hungry Wii for inspiration. The 360 works fine as a Wii-2 substitute, given a more power-efficient package.  By late 2009, or more likely 2010, such a package could be made available, and in a sense, M$ would hit their "we're first" goal again.

Btw, have Sony paid you to crap on MS? Because you have a posting history of doing that.

But sshh I better not say the truth, that'll really anger 'em.

Funny of you to blame someone for having a bias when you yourself are highly biased as well.

OK, a joker, and one of the finest.

Complex interaction? QA that doesn't make water should discover a HUGE problem related to thermal stress.

They've always been sloppy for SW, now they are for HW too.

Not only having a short lifecycle, but boasting it too put a spoke in Xbox1's wheel, at least it looks like they learned the lesson: don't tell customers and SW developers your console will die soon. And Sony even warned them, they didn't listen, so much the worse for them.

This could be true and would be good for us customers.

Thanks God MS isn't able to grab new strong leaderships, let alone monopolies, anymore.

The wording you just used is insulting. Having a preference for the 360 is something that people try to sing and dance around it and should have instead be worn with pride?. The innuendo is obvious.

He doesn't make a flag out of his gaming preference just like many other people do. You can go baww at them, starting with many of this site moderators who don't make an issue of what they play with.

It make sense for MS to continue harware revisions and production of the 360 for as long as it is selling Profitably at a reasonable rate. There are no bad deals with Nvida or Intel this time around the design belongs to Microsoft. They can continue to revise the hardware as smaller process become available for increased yeild and lowered production costs. There is no reason for MS to stop 360 production once if they are first to market  with their next console. Poeple buying console at and end of life cycle price point are not early adoptors.

 I hope to see all the manufacturers adopt an atitude that backwards compatibility should be a primary focus when developing the Architecture of next gen systems. Not because I care about playing old games but beacause it will make transitions easier for gamers who do and more importantly for developers to get a head start on developing quality titles for next gen systems. It will also leave the market open for a contiued release of new 360 titles well into the life of their next console.

 As a self acknowledged graphics whore I am pretty satisfied with where games are on the 360. Hell the lauch titles are still pretty enough for my standards. I see no need for a massive change in architecture this time around.Scale the current architecture, give me gobs more ram, and a standard hard drive on all skus or just 1 sku and I'll be happy.   

The question of how long MS thinks the 360 will be selling for is quite different from the question of when the next Xbox will come out. Just look at PS2/PS3, the PS2 still sells well into the lifetime of the PS3, maybe Microsoft wants to try doing the same.

One thing which there's no reason to fear is another Xbox-style sudden discontinuation of the 360. The Xbox situation was very specific in nature, and outside Microsoft's control if I've heard it correctly (Nvidia owned the GPU design and didn't want to produce it anymore; no GPU, no console). This time Microsoft owns the whole console so no problems there.

Regarding the next Xbox, I don't think it will come earlier than 2011. It just doesn't make sense, they'll want the Wii to lose at least some steam before launching a console, which won't happen in such a short period. 2012 wouldn't surprise me either, anything later than that means that Microsoft had a radical change of plans.

Well, it's obvious to me that after knowing that you read a few of my posts, you know me better than I do myself.

Yes, it's obvious that I'm a biased 360 owner, even though the Xbox wasn't even my favorite console last generation or that I've owned ever major gaming system (or played them extensively through roommates) over the past three generations. At one point or another, I've had favorite consoles from Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft. I play the system that has the games I like and I like that system as a result. This isn't rocket science. I'm neither dancing nor singing around anything, I'm just telling you the truth. Frankly, I don't give a shit whether you like it or not.

If anything, my overall attitude is "biased" toward the PC but no one seems to notice that... 

i think they will keep it in the market for a long time, but i also think that sales of the the 360 will be terribly low nearing the end of it's life. the console just doesn;t look like it can hold up sales long enough in my opinion.

So they finally decided that releasing a console every 4 years would be a stupid idea. Looks like Sony was correct on the expenses that it would cost. Nintendo of course sided with Sony a while ago agreeing with Sony completely. Seems M$ wont willingly admit Sony is correct though.

Still sounds like they might release the next console in 2010 while the others release their consoles 2012 or 2013.