In an interview with MCV about Project Natal, Phil Spencer of Microsoft Game Studios hints at more hardware add-ons for the Xbox 360 in the future. “We effectively reinvented the Xbox once already when we rewrote the dashboard,” Spencer says, “It’s not about trying to sell consumers a new piece of hardware at the wrong time, it’s about evolving the platform continuously. And we are going to find things, like Natal, that are hardware related to also do that.” And did you catch that bit right there, where he acknowledges how the economy is in the toilet? Classy, Phil, classy.

He goes on to say, “We instead want consumers and developers to know that we are all going to make a huge return on that original investment in the hardware… In the current climate that’s something people are going to appreciate much more.” So it seems that it may be a while until we get the next Xbox, but in the meantime, as the current gen continues to ‘reinvent’ itself, we’ll have to spend smaller amounts to keep up with the peripherals. And really, I have no problem with that whatsoever since Natal is a nice step toward turning my living room into a functional holodeck.