In a recent interview Robbie Bach, President of Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, said that its going to be a while before we can all get excited about the Xbox 720, or the next console war. This could actually be a good thing for Microsoft, which just started making money off the Xbox 360 last year.

“Just coming up with something that’s faster and prettier isn’t going to be sufficient. The life cycle for this generation of consoles — and I’m not just talking about Xbox, I’d include Wii and PS3 as well — is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations,” said Bach.

This theory certainly has Sony and its handful of ardent fanboys left high-fiving each other for their “10 year life cycle,” but what has made Microsoft suddenly wise up? Well, this does come just on the heals of a reported unemployment rate of 7.2 percent.

Instead of working toward the next big thing, Bach said Microsoft will be relying on the Xbox 360 and work on improving their games and features. Again this is largely because of the economy. Bach went on to say that today’s consumers are more “value-conscious,” which may explain why the Wii is still selling out and why Nintendo was the cause of three fourths of the 10 percent increase in industry sales this past November.

Microsoft wants to make sure that the economy starts to recover and that they are “positioned well” before making consumers feel like they need to upgrade. If that’s the case, Microsoft, what’s the deal with Windows 7?