(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Tradition dictates there will at some point be an Xbox 720, or 1080, or whatever foolishness Microsoft's marketing department decides is a suitable name for the company's third games consoles.

Tradition would also seem to dictate it'll be any day now – we're four years on from the release of the Xbox 360, which was itself released four years after the original Xbox.

The same, theoretically, is true of a Playstation 4, though a little less pressingly so. Its infamous predecessor is now three years old, and arrived six years after the launch of the still-existent Playstation 2. So news of a new Sony console should be hitting the horizon very soon, right?

This is the console generation that breaks the cycle, the regular hardware refresh from competing manufacturers that became a trend when Sega followed up the Master System with the Genesis/Megadrive and Nintendo followed suit by replacing the NES with the SNES.

2011 has oft been touted as the year we'll see the Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox 720 consoles, but that's now looking increasingly unlikely. The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 are only just getting started.

There are three key reasons for the extension of the current console generation. The first, is, perhaps, the most obvious – the prevailing financial climate. Now is not the time to be introducing a new electronic luxury item - and not simply because consumers will balk at spending a few hundred quid when most of them already have a capable gaming machine with a slew of £40-50 games.

"Both Microsoft and Sony are under enormous pressure", explains Nicholas Lovell, Founder of games consultancy Gamesbrief.

"Microsoft from Google and Apple as it tries to work out how Windows and Office fit into a web-based, cloud-computing future, and Sony because it needs to transition from being an engineering company to a modern intellectual-property company. Investors have not got the appetite for further, expensive wars to fight for what may well be a shrinking market: the hardcore gaming market."

New controllers

Which brings us to point two – the pursuit of a different gaming market. On the near horizon is Project Natal for the Xbox 360 – a plug-in box capable of, reportedly, breathtaking motion, face and voice recognition.

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PROJECT NATAL: A demo at the recent GamesCom event

It's intended as a total controller replacement, shifting from button-presses to naturalistic body gestures - a riposte to Nintendo's Wii. From the Sony camp comes the PlayStation Motion Controller, which looks uncomfortably like an obscure sex toy but, similarly, is a gesture-based device intended to attract a less hardcore gaming audience to the PS3.

These new controllers were not made lightly; they are not experimental gimmicks made to please gadget fetishists. They exist because the Wii has proven that there is a huge, huge audience out there that consoles have traditionally left untapped, and one that doesn't care about bleeding-edge graphics or even The Next Part In The Epic [insert violence-based sci-fi franchise here] Saga.

"I absolutely believe that Natal and the motion controller are part of a strategy to extend the lifecycle," says industry analyst Nicholas Novell. "Nintendo has convincingly demonstrated that graphical fidelity and processing power are not the only battlegrounds for consumers.

"Accessible, intuitive gameplay is key. Historically, the jump to the next generation has been driven, at least partially, by the need to offer gamers the latest technology: I believe that the latest technology is now the controller, not the visuals or underlying technology."

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wow thanks for the info dude, i dont really mind if the next consoles take a lot of time because i think they will be quite good still when the new consoles are out, and the new xbox 720 is just plain ugly

I think the xbox 720 could come out soon because the ps3's graphics and space(blueray discs) are making the 360 obsolete. I think we wont see a ps4 for a long time, however.

I'm fine the Xbox like it is.

i doubt we will see them anytime soon i mean technology hasnt advanced enough to make a new console since the ps3 came out, and if it does soon it will be very very expensive.

ya me too its doing its job for now =D

sweet thx for info

Nice, hopefully we get another few years out of our consoles.

yea 360 is good enough as is

Obsolete?? Are you kidding me. You my friend need to learn to do some research before trying to pass something off as a fact.

Article from Reuter's.


Just a few months ago we all agreed that the video games industry seemed to be recession-proof, providing retail strength in the face of every other entertainment sector collapsing. But that clearly isn’t the case, and the Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PSP, PS3, and PS2 all dropping in July according to NPD.

It actually looks as though the video games market is running a few months behind the rest of the retail sectors. While all around we were seeing significant falls in sales, video games were bucking the trend. Now the opposite is true, with the first signs of a recovery occurring in every sector apart from video games.

NPD U.S. Hardware Sales Chart - July 2009 (Courtesy of GI.biz)

Nintendo DS - 538,900
Nintendo Wii - 252,200
Microsoft Xbox 360 - 202,900
Sony PSP - 122,800
Sony PS3 - 121,800
Sony PS2 - 108,000


All six games consoles currently on the market dropped in terms of unit sales in July in the United States. Overall, video games hardware and software sales came in at $848.9 million, a drop of 29 percent on last year. Year-to-date sales stand at $8.16 billion, 14 percent lower than at this stage in 2008. On a month-to-month basis, sales dropped 27.4 percent between June and July.

Nintendo

Nintendo continues its reign at the top of the sales charts, with the DS and Wii occupying the top two positions as they have done for many months. However, both consoles saw significant drops in sales, with the DS shedding over 200,000 units and the Wii over 100,000 units between June and July.

Microsoft

The Xbox 360 also dropped but by a lesser 40,000 units or so. Microsoft will take solace in the fact NPD noted the Xbox 360 was the only console showing a year-to-date sales increase at this stage, with a 17 percent growth figure. But 200,000 consoles sold in the company’s strongest territory is still not great.

Sony

Last as usual is Sony, with the company once again occupying the bottom 3 positions. Once again, all three Sony consoles sold very similar amounts, which seeing as the PSP is a handheld and the PS2 is a console well past its sell-by date isn’t good news for the PS3. The PSP leapfrogged the PS3 to take fourth place overall this month.