Mehdi: New IPs prove Xbox 360's vitality

Microsoft's chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi believes Microsoft's focus on new IP proves the Xbox 360 has plenty of life in it yet.

Speaking to VentureBeat, Mehdi said Microsoft wasn't impressed by Sony's new IPs.

"I think they showed two new IPs. I think we showed at least three or four. We showed LocoCycle, Wrecketeer, Ascend, Matter. All world premiere first-time exclusives," Mehdi insisted.

"I do feel like with the four IPs that we showed, the ones we talked about, LocoCycle, Ascend, I think those are all things that people are probably surprised about. Wow, seven years into the cycle and you’re shipping four new IPs, what’s that say? Well, it says that the 360 continues to be a good platform."

Mehdi said he expects the Xbox 360 to be on the market "for many more years to come" with "continued improvements and updates and enhancements" because "it continues to be a very robust platform to do gaming and entertainment".

"We’re able to continually drop lower prices through things like what we’re doing now with our lower price testing. And we’re seeing volumes grow," he said, reiterating that Xbox 360 has increased in sales in its fifth, sixth and seventh years of life, a break from the tradition of fourth year drop offs.

"We showed, on stage, four first-party exclusive premieres of IP. I think that’s a good statement that, yeah, there’s a lot of activity there," he said.

The marketing boss was quick to point out the Xbox 360's advantages over rival platforms, too.

"We’ll be the only platform that has the best first-party shooters this holiday. The only platform. Because we’ll have Halo 4 and Battlefield and we’ll have Call of Duty with exclusive 30-day download. Those are the three hottest, number one shooter games, they’ll do more volume than any other effort," he said.

"That’s only Xbox 360. And then Gears of War as well. I could kinda go down a few like that. I think anyone who’s a core gamer knows that this is a great place to play games. And then we also have the Xbox Live Gold multiplayer. If you like multiplayer, which a lot of people do, it’s still the place where people go to play multiplayer."