Not a huge thing, but I think it's significant. In an interview with Peter Moore, EGM grilled him about when the next one would come out, and questions about if they'd drop the X360 like a box of rocks like they did with the 360. He said that they were going to support it "as long as it sold" which is BS, because the Xbox sold well into this year despite no producting after Oct. 2005. At any rate, he stated the production team from the 360 is working on the next Xbox, and their looking into what kind of CPUs will be available on the market in 2011-2012. That would put the 360 at a lifespan of 6 or 7 years, a far cry from the Xbox's 4 years. Part of this (I assume) is to maintain profitability of the 360 over it's lifespan...The longer you get into the cycle, the more profit you can make due to stopping being a loss leader. How do you think this will affect sales? Personally, I see the 360 pulling a near-PS2 in the US and continue to sell well into 2011 and even 2012. The Xbox franchise seems to be very strong in the US with Halo, and should strenghten further, as MS now will have the entire generation to make games with Rare, Lionhead, Bizzare, and other studios they have. I think 55m worldwide is very reasonable, as it'd be just at 9.1m units sold a year for 6 years - to which the 360 sold in it's first year.

I'm actually surprised they're really working on it already.

Seems about right time wise. The 360 sales will increase after the price drop this year.

If I remember correctly, the development team didn't get a break in between the Xbox and 360. It seems they probably got nearly a year in between. If you were to dev. a piece of hardware for a 2011 launch, what would you put on your wishlist of known technologies? Personally: HVD Disk Drive (already out now, should become cheap by a 2011 launch) 500gb HD @ 10k RPM or so (for downloading full X360 games. True BC baby!) 1gb Magnetic RAM for pre-loaded OS "instant on" system 5gb standard RAM Obvious high-end GPU Obvious high-end CPU system with number of typical cores + 25% Extra RAM or HD space for pre-loaded middleware suites for faster load times.

Makes sense, sony is already doing work on PS4! the second the design is finished on a product, design for its replacment starts.

Well, if I remember correctly, back in 2001 Nintendo talked about how the build their systems ... Essentiall, as soon as they complete work on their current system they begin working on their next system; the reason for this is that it takes a long time to figure out how to produce a cutting-edge technological system which is cost effective. Now, personally I suspect that a lot of the technology that was being developed for the Wii in 2001/2002 was probably abandoned as Nintendo decided to go in another direction ...

Considering the 360 has nearly a 8 million unit headstart, yes. :)