Hasta La Gadget!

With the Xbox One releasing later this year, many may think that Microsoft will leave the Xbox 360 by the wayside, but it seems that’s on the contrary, as the company aims to sell 25 million units over the next five years, even with the console’s successor on the market. Microsoft plans to move a whopping 400 million units during its lifetime.

Microsoft’s senior vice president of Interactive Entertainment Business, Yusuf Mehdi, says that the company plans to continue to support the Xbox 360 into the foreseeable future, and the company even has a big announcement planned at E3 for the Xbox 360 that will “keep the console vibrant for years,” according to Microsoft.

Overall, Microsoft wants to sell over 100 million Xbox 360 consoles before they inevitably end up calling it quits on the eight-year-old machine. But the company has even more ambitious goals for the Xbox One. Mehdi says that “most industry experts think the next generation will get upwards of about 400 million units…over the next decade.”

Of course, these estimates come from analysts, but Mehdi and the rest of Microsoft believe that’s a realistic number to hit for their next-generation console. And because Microsoft will be marketing the Xbox One as an entertainment device and not just a gaming console, they think they can reach more people than with the Xbox 360. Thus resulting in more units sold.

In April, Microsoft reported that they sold 130,000 Xbox 360 consoles during that month, which is down by more than half from previous months, but if we take that number as the average and base it on future Xbox 360 sales, that comes out to only 7.8 million consoles sold over five years. Even if we double that to almost 16 million, that’s nowhere near the 25 million that Microsoft wants to achieve in five short years, and that’s even with the Xbox One not even out yet. So if Microsoft wants to reach 100 million Xbox 360 consoles sold, it’s going to have to work a miracle, to put it kindly.

SOURCE: Xbox Magazine

Xbox One sets sights on 400m sold, Xbox 360 aims for 100m is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Now that the Xbox One has been revealed, it’s time to begin speaking about when the device will actually be released to the market. This week the Xbox One (code-named Durango or otherwise Xbox 720) was shown with several details including those surrounding the device’s innards, but as far as official word of its real final market release goes, Microsoft has been essentially mum.

The company announced thus far that the device will be released “later this year”. If this release is meant to coincide with several games that have been announced for the system already, this timeframe suggests the holiday season – and if it’s prepared to be released at the same time as major titles like Call of Duty: Ghosts, it’ll be out in November.

As Ghosts is set to be released on the 5th of November, and that timeframe is essentially perfect for a holiday gift-giving release, gamers can pretty much bank on the idea that they’ll be waiting at least a few more months before the final device is on the market. The fact that the console and peripherals shown yesterday were still being called “prototypes” by Microsoft handlers on-site also lends to the idea that the Xbox One wont be coming extremely soon.

Microsoft has made it clear that the showing yesterday – a mere one hour long – was only the first installment of at least 2 showings the device and the games that’ll work with it will be getting. The second showing will be at the gaming convention E3 2013.

At E3, not just Microsoft, but gaming developers galore will be showing their wares to the public. This convention traditionally plays host to the largest announcements of the year – but here in 2013, hardware and software companies have begun to get wise about their individual event power in the press. Microsoft and Sony (with their PlayStation 4) have decidedly split things up to have as much potential staying power as possible.

Gamescom will also be taking place starting on the 21st of August until the 25th – this is a less likely place for Microsoft and Sony to show off any major announcements, but sits in second place nontheless. E3 will take place June 11th through the 13th, and you can count SlashGear in for the whole lot – stay tuned!

Xbox One release date may appear at E3 in Microsoft’s second wave is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As the Xbox One was revealed by Microsoft this week, so too did Bonnie Ross from 343 Industries take the stage to discuss one of the platform’s mainstays: Halo. As the Xbox One is being pushed as an All In One system for home entertainment, Microsoft is bringing Halo forward as an interactive live-action television

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This week Microsoft started their first major next-generation Xbox game console event off with a bang, showing the console and naming it all at once: the Xbox One. Before the event began, it was (once again) revealed that today’s reveal took more than just a weekend to create – Don Mattrick, , noted that “we’ve

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This week traffic in the game console realm has ramped up, and not just because Microsoft will be releasing one half of the information necessary to understand their next release in the Xbox 720. While Xbox evangelist Major Nelson makes sure the world knows that they’ll be able to watch the whole event with a Live Video Player app on Windows Phone 8, SlashGear prepares by revving up the analysis engines and thumbing through the tiplines.

While the big event starts at 1PM Eastern Time tomorrow, it becomes time here and now to see what we’ve got on tap. This is the Xbox 720, very possibly set to be the first Xbox since the first released at the start of this line to be named simply “Xbox.” Along with it comes rumor of an Xbox Surface device, bringing on a whole new generation of Microsoft’s home-made tablets aimed directly at the gaming world.

With or without the Xbox Surface, word of early prototypes has reached SlashGear’s ears from sources anonymous, noting several elements as being cut or at least having been put on the cutting block and kept at the last minute for the console. One of the more important of these is a feature allowing the Xbox 720 to act as a mid-way point between your TV box and your television.

With this constantly-on feature, the Xbox would work with Xbox LIVE to give you updates and send you requests while you’re watching television shows or movies. Without such a feature, the Xbox would be attached as it always has been – connected to an input on your TV separate from the rest of your devices. With an HDMI-in port on the Xbox 720, it would appear that, somehow or another, Microsoft intends to keep you at attention all the time.

The Xbox 720 has been tipped to have “Xbox TV” features both in and out of the mix in past iterations before its final presentation this summer, with Google TV boxes having acted as a guide at points here or there. With cries out for a fully games-dedicated machine from early testers of the device, it may be that Microsoft has pulled back a bit on the entertainment side of things.

It’s been suggested that this version of the Xbox might work with DVR functionality as well as a TV tuner, both of these having been available as accessories for the PlayStation 3 internationally in the past. With such things built-in to the new Xbox, things could be more centralized for Microsoft in the living room than ever before.

The Xbox 720 has been suggested to be revealed in pieces, similar to what Sony is doing with with the PlayStation 4 – and both devices will have a massive showing at E3 2013, where gaming has its heyday each year.

Xbox 720 console prototype cuts tell of a stripped-down final release is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.