At E3 2009, Microsoft Executive Shane Kim announced the plans that the Xbox 360 would have a “life cycle through 2015″. After a dreadful past record thanks to the Red Rings of Death (RRoD), many thought the Xbox 360 had seen its last days and a new console would be imminent. Then came the New Xbox Experience, redesigning the console through software rather than hardware. With these expectations of Microsoft for their consoles longevity, what will change or be implemented on the console without a whole new system altogether?

Blu-Ray

During the format war, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were battling it out with Microsoft and Sony supporting their chosen formats respectively. After Blu-Ray won, Microsoft focused their efforts on digital distribution. With broadband coverage in Xbox Live regions fantastic and speeds ever-increasing, this has been a successful choice and allowed larger Arcade games to be downloaded by gamers. But, until (if ever) the physical discs are phased out, videogames will be restricted to the size of the disc / drive they are on. With the largest standard DVD discs limited to just over 8GB of data, multiple discs, whilst not too interfering and common, are still a hindrance to a freeflowing gaming experience. Blu-Ray with sizes up to 100GB removes the need for multiple discs, as well as allowing the freedom to not compress data, meaning sharper and cleaner graphics, higher quality sound and more content. So, we are more than expecting a Blu-Ray drive add-on, much like Xbox did with the HD-DVD but with the reigning champion of home disc storage.

Bigger Hard Drives

Unless you have a limited edition Xbox, such as the Modern Warfare 2 or Forza Motorsport 3 ones, the largest Xbox hard drive you can purchase is a 120GB. Whilst it seems that the 120GB is being phased out to make way for a standalone 250GB, with games such as Final Fantasy XIII needing almost 15GB to install to the drive, Arcade titles continually getting larger and easily averaging a few hundred megabytes and titles like Shadow Complex using over a gigabyte. As well as the increased emphasis on software such as the NXE, Facebook and Twitter apps, Last.fm, 1 vs 100 and video downloads, the seemingly ‘infinite’ 120GB and even the 250GB drives are surely set to be redundant by 2015. We’re likely to see much larger 1TB and larger drives, or even online storage if a ‘cloud’ option is to be used. Whatever happens, bigger will be better for storage capacity.

New Peripherals

Every console and console era has seen an assortment of peripherals welcomed to the industry to keep the gameplay fun as well as offering a unique selling point for developers. We’ve seen printers for the Gameboy, Lightsabers for the Wii and soon Natal for Xbox 360. With claims by Microsoft of a controller-free experience (if and when we choose, we aren’t going to be flailing constantly to play games!) Natal looks set to be more than a simple peripheral. Utilising motion sensing technology, voice recognition and more technological goodies, this ‘camera’ is set to be the first in a long line of game changing hardware. So, Natal this year, 3D televisions and whatever that brings for gaming in 2011 and who knows what in the years after that.

Interaction / Participation

Before reminding me that all games require interaction, I am referring to the likes of 1 vs 100, hence live participation with live hosts to win prizes. We all have watched TV. We have all seen a game show and thought “I could do better”. Well, now you can in an environment you know and enjoy and we can definitely expect to see more of this, especially for non-beta versions. With gaming now attracting the premium advertising rates that other mediums do, console makers can afford live hosts, flashy gameplay and sets and best of all, prizes! Imagine winning a new games console and games after your teammate guessed your charade, aided by Project Natal. Sound fun?

Engaging The Internet

We’ve seen the Facebook application on Xbox Live. Nothing notable, it’s simply sharing photos and updating your status. Look deeper, and we find the ‘friend linker’ where we can see our friends gamertags from their Facebook accounts. It sounds nothing special, but this is one of what is set to be many interactions between videogames and the Internet. Gran Turismo 5, I know is not an Xbox title, but is set to allow you to export your videos to YouTube. Now, with games like 1 vs 100, imagine seeing yourself as the One answering questions on YouTube after your video has been exported. Imagine being able to instantly interact with online gamers by finding out their Twitter / Facebook (subject to privacy settings of course) and the whole videogame community being more aware of one another on other mediums.

Do you have any thoughts of what other things we will see that will prolong the lifespan of the Xbox? Whether it be software, hardware or a handheld Major Nelson reminding you to achievement whore. Let us know in the comments below or post on the forum article.