The Xbox 360 is the oldest of the three current generation game consoles with nearly six years of life. But according to an executive at Microsoft, it may be a while before the company officially retires the console. Computer and Video Games reports that Chris Lewis, a VP for the European division of Xbox, states, "We see it as about halfway through." Part of the reason was the launch last fall of the Kinect motion controller camera. Lewis states, "There"s no doubt that Kinect put a huge shot of adrenaline into the business. What we are now seeing is massive swathes of families and younger audiences flocking to it."
Just before E3 2011, Microsoft released some sales info for the Xbox 360 hardware. It showed that the console, despite being nearly six years old, was actually gaining in unit sales. Usually consoles that are this old see their sales go down. So far, Microsoft has sold 55 million units of the console worldwide. At E3 2011, the company announced that the console would be getting a new interface later this fall that would be fully compatible with the Kinect camera. Added support for YouTube is also in the works and Microsoft announced that broadcast television is also coming to the console.
Recently rumors hit the Internet that developer Crytek had access to an early hardware build of the successor to the Xbox 360 but Crytek has officially denied that report. Another game developer, Avalanche Studio, has announced that it expects at least one next-gen console to be released by 2014.