Microsoft Game Studios Chief Shane Kim says the company is planning a “long tail” for the Xbox 360, which he expects will have a significantly greater lifespan than the original Xbox.
Speaking in an interview with CVG, Kim said that while specifics about how the console will be maintained into the future have not yet been determined, he sees no problem with the console being around long enough to accommodate the full Too Human trilogy, which Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack said would take seven years to complete. “We said from the beginning that we expect the Xbox 360 to have a long tail,” Kim said. “Clearly we didn’t do that with the original Xbox, which was a strategic decision we made. Admittedly, we don’t have any experience doing this, but we’re pretty confident 360 will have a long tail.”
“You’re going to continue to see technical innovation, it might be additional capabilities to the current format – but honestly we haven’t made those kind of decisions yet,” he added.
He also addressed potential technological limitations of the system, saying the full power of the system hasn’t yet been tapped, and affirmed Microsoft’s noncommittal approach to Blu-ray. “I think there’s the potential for more multi-disc titles, we’ve already seen a few of those already. But I don’t think this is so drastic that people will start saying that Microsoft made a mistake not using Blu-ray. I just don’t believe that,” he said. “What we’ve been able to see with the vast majority of titles on Xbox 360 is really great experiences not really constrained with the lack of a hard drive or a larger capacity disc.” He also placed some responsibility for ensuring the future of the system on the shoulders of developers, adding, “I think we will probably see more games released on multiple discs and the challenge is then for the developers to create an experience that doesn’t involve a whole bunch of constant disc swapping.”
CVG’s full interview with Shane Kim is available here.
