'The death of the video game console was prematurely announced.'

Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison says there's plenty of life left for the living room console, in a new interview with Eurogamer. "I think the death of the video game console was prematurely announced. Clearly there is a lot of excitement around gaming in the living room on the biggest screen in the house, often times connected to a great sound system and creating that real intensely high quality game experience with a very powerful CPU and a very powerful GPU," says Harrison. Asked if consoles were dying out in the wake of growing interest in smartphone and tablet games, Harrison put things into a historical perspective. "[The most recent console generation], if you include Xbox 360 and the other Sony and Nintendo consoles, is by far and away the biggest generation the console industry has ever seen. [It] was substantially, materially bigger than [the previous console cycle] -- in some markets two or three times as big." "You're seeing a lot of growth in console but you're also seeing a lot of growth in gaming fullstop, whether it's on mobile phones, tablets or consoles and a number of new entrants. So the games market overall is in an incredibly strong position... Every generation has been bigger than its previous generation. So the macro economic of the game industry is incredibly strong." Harrison pointed to the recent (and ongoing) retail success of Grand Theft Auto V, which blitzed past sales projections to surpass $1 billion in just three days. "It's the biggest entertainment launch in any medium of all time. And it's on console."