Most of the specs should be set in stone by now. You can't add more cores or put a higher bus width with so little time to the launch. You can tweak frequencies, change a bit the form factor, put a better or a cheaper refrigeration system... but you can't change much of what you are going to launch in less than a year.
Up to the launch it's a race to have a better SDK and the most polished launch games, a software race. It isn't a hardware arms race, it is mostly fixed by now. He's talking PR language.