Those of us who have been around for awhile usually know what to expect from a generation of game consoles: They come out, stick around for five of six years, and then the next batch hits. The fate of the last generation tends to vary; Xbox and GameCube practically died overnight, while the PlayStation 2 still has releases coming, thanks to their massive install base and Sony's commitment to a 10-year life cycle on its products.

Looking back at Microsoft, they've kept quiet about when we might start hearing about their next next-generation... that is, until now. Without getting too specific, they've alluded to this generation being "a little longer" than those prior.

I think this generation will be longer, because there is so much scalability. When you look at NXE, that is a complete revision of the interface and the look and feel and every aspect of the system. That's not predicated by new hardware. We have fundamentally done that through software and services. So if you think of that scalability and the opportunity to enhance and develop what we do with this platform, then I think it's very, very possible–and indeed appropriate–that this generation will be longer. But we're not specific about when that will happen, and we don't have a particular timeline that we share right now. But as I said, there's a lot more still to come. -- Chris Lewis, Microsoft VP of Interactive Entertainment Business for EMEA, to Edge Online

It would make sense that they might want to stay in the game a bit longer, since Sony's PlayStation 3 got a later start. What I'm really wondering about is Nintendo; the general consensus is that HD will be the standard by the next generation; so would they continue to run with the outpowered Wii in an HD environment until the others started making moves, or would they do something virtually unheard of for them: Take the first step into the next generation?