The next generation of Xbox consoles will arrive next year and feature the new ‘Project Natal’ motion-sensing canera device as standard, says 1up.com. It’ll have a brand new name too.

1up’s sources indicate a hardware evolution rather than an outright revolution. In other words the new machine won’t be the Xbox 720, as much as the old model with a few technological enhancements. Better performance and whizzier visuals are a distinct possibility, though. Hey, maybe they’ll finally sort out the noisy cooling fan too!

Old Xbox 360 games will still be playable on the new system, we’re assured. However developers complaining that they’ve pretty much exhausted the Xbox 360’s capabilities will have the extra oomph to push boundaries even further. That’s the theory, anyway.

More on all of this soon, we hope – 1up reckons ‘Xbox Natal’ will be formally announced at the 2010 Game Developer’s Conference with a release next autumn. Meantime it looks like Microsoft and Nintendo’s current-gen technologies are converging, albeit from different angles – MS adding motion controls to a high definition console; Nintendo beefing-up the Remote’s sensitivity and (apparently) developing Wii HD. Interesting times...