At this point, it's wishful thinking to imagine that Microsoft would ever slip up and confirm the existence of the "Xbox 720," much less actually say that the Xbox 360 is going to be replaced. That leaves the press at large to glean what little snippets of info we can from interviews and random chatter. does that from this interview with Microsoft Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Chris Lewis, who gave a few quote-able bits about the subject.

:

CL: Well, we think we're more than halfway through but given we are still growing, we think we're at a healthy part in the life cycle still because we've pumped this adrenaline into the arm of the business with Kinect and the scope and scale of what that means for publishers and developers I think is huge... So we think we're a little over halfway with the life cycle of the console, but that's not to say there won't be an overlap...

GC: So those 10 years, they won't be the Xbox 360 alone? The Xbox 720, or whatever it's called, will presumably be leaking into some of those 10 years?

CL: Could possibly be the case. I'm not going to announce specifically or talk about timing. But you could imagine there could be overlap, it depends. We're not being specific about the next generation at this stage. We're very fixated on what we're doing right now and the success we're enjoying.