The Future of Gaming

With the current generation of gaming riding the hump of their lifecycle I have to ask…why should M$ release a new box?

Television resolutions have not increased and will not increase in the foreseeable future. Any new box would have to be backwards compatible with the enormous library of games that have come out, many of which are still drawing huge numbers on XBL. Not only that, but most major changes can be implemented with at patch or update as we’ve seen with the NXE. What major improvements could we see? Blue Ray will probably be obsolete in 5 years and a hd drive would only drive up the cost of the box. Built in Wi-fi and Bluetooth would be nice, but would eliminate some of M$ proprietary peripherals – therefore, not likely to happen.

The game developers are finally rolling with regular releases on well known graphics engines and seem to have a pretty good system in place.

Then there is the issue of design, factory setup and god only knows what defects and recalls to deal with. It would appear to be an expensive and risky move. As far as I can tell, the main point would be to pull people from other platforms and draw attention with a big release. But is that worth the investment the R&D and a call center that must now deal with 3 generations of gaming consoles? Maybe you’re more on top of the situation than I. So, what’s the point?