Xbox 720: When Will it Come Out?

The competition is fierce in the video games industry. As Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony battle it out today, plenty has been said about when the companies will launch the new next generation of consoles. There's Sony's PlayStation 4 (PS4) and whatever Nintendo decides to come out with after the Wii (Wii 2), but when exactly will Microsoft release the Xbox 720?

A ballpark estimate puts the launch of the Xbox 720 sometime in 2011 or 2012, according to Crytek president and CEO Cevat Yerli.

"The PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will arrive in 2011 or 2012, we think," Yerli told GamesIndustry.biz. "But this is just our estimate - we don't know, and even if Microsoft and Sony told us, I couldn't say because it would be under NDA."

"But we think in three to four years' time, although there are good reasons why it should be 2010 already... but we'll see," he said.

As for Microsoft's take on Xbox 720, Peter Moore, former head of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division, told magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly that the Xbox 360 would be supported "as long as it sold."

Moore also maintained that the 360's production team is hard at work on Xbox 720, and the company is looking into what kind of CPUs will be available on the market in 2011-2012.

Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, also weighed in, telling Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat in an interview that the company's view has been that it will be selling the Xbox 360 for a "long time," insisting that people are continuously working on new technology.

According to Bach, Microsoft began thinking about the next generation even before the Xbox 360 shipped. "It doesn't start with a date," he explained. "It starts way upstream with silicon development. From that comes a series of data points. You start making early technology choices. It's an evolving thing. Stuff doesn't become concrete until you get inside a window of when you have to ship, more than 18 months or so out."