I write this with a heavy heart and a slow hand. I didn’t get much news out yesterday or the day before, and for that I make no excuses and promise to be back on the ball over the Weekend. One thing I couldn’t simply let pass without posting (even for a few hours) is the fact that in a press release to Kotaku Microsoft have announced that they have NO plans to announce or reveal a successor to the XBox 360 at E3 or at any other time this year.

All my excitement and rumour-mongering has come to naught as Microsoft crush my dreams for a true Next Gen Console sometime in the near future. Sony also announced that they wouldn’t be revealing a PS4 any time soon either which was, while not a massive a blow as the loss of the 720, also a disappointment.

You can check out some more of the details at Eurogamer but the upshot of it is that Microsoft wants to continue to focus on the 360 for the near future. Especially as it has it’s “best line up yet” this year with Halo 4 and Fable: The Journey. Apparently they also want to do more with Kinect.

While I certainly agree that this years line up is rather excellent, saying “best yet” seems a bit silly to me, especially as Skyrim ISN’T coming out this year…

Regardless of all of that though, I guess we will have to wait another year before we hear anything about new consoles again. I do think that at this stage it’s no longer simply a desire but a necessity. Skyrim itself taught us that the 360 simply cannot handle the current graphics levels and I really want to be able to play max graphics games on my consoles!