Another five years for Xbox 360?

Who knows,” Xbox’s UK and Ireland general manager Neil Thompson replied to MCV when we asked if the Xbox 360 can survive another five years on the market.

He didn’t say this because he doesn’t know (let’s be clear – he will have an inkling, but he’s not letting), but because it isn’t really relevant just yet to start guessing the 360’s expiration date.

Thompson is excited about how 360 will start tapping into the wider online world rather than just throwing a new box into the market every few years.

The 360 constantly evolved and through Live we have added a lot of longevity in what we can offer,” he says.

Software and services keep the hardware fresh. Now Kinect is an addition of hardware, yes, but combining it with the magic of software is what makes 360 seem new today. We’ve recognised you can reinvent everyone’s console on a regular basis just through a software update. When we launched 360 it was already an incredibly powerful machine, so it had scope to grow and develop. We’ve been leading that view, and that’s really helped us in the UK .

We’re still learning where the connected entertainment environment will take us. We’ve just introduced video chat with Kinect that connects people around the world – elsewhere we’ve got Xbox Live enabled phones talking to consoles and PCs,” he says.

That whole future connected world, and how people take these experiences around with them, that’s the next big piece of learning that we can all go through – and that’s very energising.”

To read MCV’s full interview with Thompson, click here.