In an interview with Venture Beat this week, Microsoft Games Division Exec Shane Kim said that he expects the Xbox 360 to enjoy a 10-year life span, meaning we'll likely see new hardware around the fourth quarter of 2015.
 
"We firmly believe that the Xbox 360 has a life cycle through 2015 (10 years after the launch). Project Natal is a great innovation," Kim Said. "It will work with every Xbox 360 sold. It's not about pushing more pixels on the screen. It's about how to break down barriers that stop people from playing games."
 
Kim also goes on to shed some light on the, shall we say surprising choice to call the new motion sensitive camera system unveiled at E3 Natal instead of some of the rumored Microsoft Motion or Fluid.
 
"Natal is a city in Brazil, which is where one of our key development team members if from. Natal also means birth. We thought it was appropriate for what we are doing. This is the birth of the next-generation of home entertainment."
 
So what about pricing, availability and software?  According to the exec, the company is keeping a close eye on not only their technology but the competition before making anything public.
 
 
 
"We are saying it's not going to be 2009," Kim said. "We have put the technology in the developers' hands. But the spring of 2010 is very aggressive. Sony has made other promises before (responding to Sony's claims of a 2010 release for their motion controller). We'll see if this one comes true. Not only do you have to get the technology right, you have to have third parties supporting it and great first-party software. We showed demos yesterday and we have a lot of work being done at Microsoft Game Studios that we haven't shown yet."
 
Head over to Venture Beat to read the rest of the interview, as Kim goes in-depth with the project's origins and multiplayer aspects as well as his thoughts on the other companies.
 

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