The 5 year mark was put out there simply because I expect MS to try to launch their new system before everyone else again and while they may support the 360 for a while afterward I don't expect them to continue to support it for much over 1-2 years past the launch of their next system.
I understand the lack of major differences in capabilities between the PS3 and the 360, the games are evidence of the lack of difference between the two which have barely noticable differences between themselves.
While you can upgrade the boxes you still have to continue to support any previous version of the 360 that has come out. This means that since they have a version with no Harddrive, the Core, they cannot take advantage of certain things the PS3 can like loading data onto the harddrive for faster boot speeds because you cannot guarantee they will have the Harddrive to do that.
The only difference we're seeing in the new models are upgrades in the Hard drive size and for the 360, the addition of HDMI ports, which was something hardcore gamers with HD TVs were demanding very strongly.
The problem with adding an add-on to the model is the same, the earlier models do not have it so you cannot assume that every 360 will have the add on, so you cannot make a game that uses those capabilities without severely limiting your demographic, which given the cost to make games on the 360 and the PS3, is not the wisest course of action.
With that said, it is entirely possible that MS will make a BD add on for movie watching at some point, as they have already with the HD DVD drive, but you will never see an internal drive that does this, nor will you see any games that use it.
It is entirely possible, at the rate that game sizes are increasing, that we'll see a majority of 360 games on multiple disks by the end of it's lifecycle, I don't necessarily believe it will impact sales of the games, or the system itself like many PS3 enthusiasts will have you believe, but it is likely, simply because of how large these games are getting and the limiting of technology on DVDs.
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The 5 year mark was put out there simply because I expect MS to try to launch their new system before everyone else again and while they may support the 360 for a while afterward I don't expect them to continue to support it for much over 1-2 years past the launch of their next system.
I understand the lack of major differences in capabilities between the PS3 and the 360, the games are evidence of the lack of difference between the two which have barely noticable differences between themselves.
While you can upgrade the boxes you still have to continue to support any previous version of the 360 that has come out. This means that since they have a version with no Harddrive, the Core, they cannot take advantage of certain things the PS3 can like loading data onto the harddrive for faster boot speeds because you cannot guarantee they will have the Harddrive to do that.
The only difference we're seeing in the new models are upgrades in the Hard drive size and for the 360, the addition of HDMI ports, which was something hardcore gamers with HD TVs were demanding very strongly.
The problem with adding an add-on to the model is the same, the earlier models do not have it so you cannot assume that every 360 will have the add on, so you cannot make a game that uses those capabilities without severely limiting your demographic, which given the cost to make games on the 360 and the PS3, is not the wisest course of action.
With that said, it is entirely possible that MS will make a BD add on for movie watching at some point, as they have already with the HD DVD drive, but you will never see an internal drive that does this, nor will you see any games that use it.
It is entirely possible, at the rate that game sizes are increasing, that we'll see a majority of 360 games on multiple disks by the end of it's lifecycle, I don't necessarily believe it will impact sales of the games, or the system itself like many PS3 enthusiasts will have you believe, but it is likely, simply because of how large these games are getting and the limiting of technology on DVDs.