The president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, Robbie Bach, refused to reveal any info about the company's plans for the Xbox 360 successor, but insisted that they are "not even thinking about the next generation" of consoles yet, and that the Xbox 360 still has "a very long life" ahead of it.
"I think we absolutely have a very long life ahead of us," he said. "I think what we're seeing this generation is that we have a console that is no longer limited by hardware. We're delivering Hi-Definition experiences. We have storage. We have high-speed connectivity. So you know we're not limited by the hardware at all."
"We see a very, very long future ahead of us as we think about the platform and we're not even thinking about the next generation at this point."
"Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient," he concluded. "The life cycle for this generation of consoles - and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PS3 as well - is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations."
The original Xbox was launched in 2001 and it successor, the Xbox 360, followed in 2005. Most analysts, however, don't expect any new consoles to be released before 2011.