Says Microsoft man

Mar 1, 2010 21:41 GMT  ·  By

2010 is shaping up to be a great year for gaming. The economies worldwide are slowly rebounding, meaning that consumers probably have more disposable income to spend on consoles and on videogames, and gaming hardware is cheaper than ever for this current generation of devices, considering that the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii all got price cuts.

And, more interestingly, for the first time, the race for second place behind the Nintendo home console seems to be an active one. The Slim version of the PS3 managed to outsell the Xbox 360 for the first months after its release and Sony is betting big on exclusives like Heavy Rain, God of War III and Gran Turismo 5 to overtake the Microsoft gadget.

But talking to Destruction, Aaron Greenberg, who is the Xbox 360 product director, said that “We believe we'll outsell the PS3 for the full year. We did in 2009.” He quickly went through the advantages of the Microsoft platform, stating, “we believe if you are a gamer and you want great games, we have more titles, more exclusives, we have the leading online community, and being able to bring really completely innovative technology like Project Natal to market this holiday, are all things that make us unique.”

Project Natal is the big unknown when it comes to Microsoft's plans for the Xbox 360 in 2010. The motion tracking system, which does not use any controller, is set to be released around Christmas and could have a price tag as low as 50 dollars.

Greenberg is saying that his company will not flood the market with hastily prepared mini-game collections for the new device and that it plans to only out Project Natal experiences that will make a great first impression on gamers. Peter Molyneux has talked about how Fable III will use Natal and demonstrated some gameplay mechanics that seem very well suited for the device.