The Xbox 360 may be a rather ancient piece of kit these days but Microsoft thinks the new Xbox One can co-exist with the current Xbox 360. Microsoft’s Chris Lewis, leader of the Xbox division for Europe, told MCV UK that the Xbox 360 has a “multi-year future” ahead of it. This is shown by Microsoft’s commitment to releasing a new Xbox 360 design, shown above.
“We remain very committed to our Xbox 360 business. It is an important part of the ecosystem, for our retailer partners, for our third-party developers and indeed for our own economics…In my own team I have a lot of people worrying a lot about that Xbox 360 plan, making sure that it is robust, that we have good healthy space in retail outlets, that we have a value proposition through Christmas, and that we harness some of that content I mentioned to you earlier. We see a genuine concurrent and healthy existence for both 360 and Xbox One.
To Microsoft it makes sense to continue marketing and selling the Xbox 360 as the more affordable sibling to the Xbox One. It will allow them to capture the more budget price point in the market which they wouldn’t be able to do by discontinuing it. They are however reliant on game developers continuing to develop new titles for the Xbox 360 even after the Xbox One comes out. In many cases this may not be possible simply because the Xbox 360 may not have the “horsepower” required to run the same games the Xbox One will run, even with toned down graphics.
Image courtesy of Microsoft
