The next generation of Xbox hardware won't be quite as barn-storming an upgrade as Xbox 360 was over the original Xbox, It'll still be quite a big leap, mind

"Clearly we still hammer up against the limitations of the hardware on a daily basis and if you push those parameters back, as I'm sure the next-gen will do, we'll hit them again," he began. "I think the main thing is that the industry doesn't get itself into a corner where it becomes economically unviable to make a game.

"The last technology iteration caught folks by surprise - especially the number of people you needed and the skillset jump to do the work that people expected. In the last generation the perception was that it was going to be a ten times improvement over the previous generation. "

"For the next generation there will be quite a big leap, but it won't be as obvious," Thompson continues. "People will do things in a cleverer fashion - and I have to be careful here as there are non-disclosure agreements involved! I think they'll be better prepared, shall we say - but we can't see a ten-fold team increase again as the budgets would just be ridiculous.

"You'd have to sell 20-30 million copies before you broke even."