Given MSFT’s current business strategy, having a PC performance target provided to developers is probably sufficient to get the ball rolling.

Sony on the other hand is far more focused, console minded and less distracted by PC matters. Sony also has far more first party, exclusive titles and mature dev kits are needed to maximize performance in those games.

More likely that they didn't expect Sony to be so far into development for the PS5 and are behind schedule. Maybe MS were waiting for AMD's newer chips and realised they couldn't wait for that.

Launching the Nextbox a long time after PS5 would be really bad for Microsoft.

1- That makes no sense. You say that a game not ending up in a goty discussion has "nothing" to do with it's quality? I would assume it's a metric, not a perfect one of course, but a metric to literally assess quality of a game compared with the competition. It doesn't mean that due to personal preference I wouldn't prefer game X over game Y, even if game Y had more critical acclaim. I'm not even talking about winning goty awards, just be in the contenders for most of the people that played them. My challenge was to go back through the generation and look for a 1st party MS studio games that were in that conversation. It's ok, I'll wait.

2- You understand my point very well, that's why you rebutted it predicting it somehow will change in the future. You go on about rumors of rumors, but the fact is, you tacitly took the point. 

3- Yep, they bought a couple studios in the last few years, that's true. So we'll see how they stack quality wise. This goes again to back up the point that quantity does not equate to quality, but I hope they do well. Like I said before, I'm really excited for Wasteland 3.

On the games comparison, I don't understand what you have against GT Sport, it's a pretty great racing sim. If something Polyphony should be releasing a lot more games. They take way too long to move from project to project, but usually the quality is top notch.

Regardless, it's absolutely obvious where the top quality first party games were this entire generation, but we don't need to discuss personal preferences.

Plot twist! Microsoft makes a 399 console and gets $100 price advantage whit a less powerful console. The $399 Xbox still gets beaten by ps5, but they manage to create a great userbase ( 70~80M?) and over 40M gamers are onboard whit gamepass for "cheap budget" gaming. All clains of "mostpowerfullconsole" are things from the past, xbox is the new house of "budget gaming" whit gamepass and clains of "over4AAAgamesayearatlauch" takes place.

Delaying it to get one over on the competition sounds like BS Console Wars stuff rather than reality. Microsoft and Sony don't think that way, they're not plotting schemes against each other like this.

Whatever schedule MS has in place for releasing and distributing dev kits has surely been in place for a long time. Whether they're meeting that schedule or not only MS know.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241435&page=1#

But looking at this seems like they are without even a target.

They certainly try to be ahead of the competition and claim best machine. But through ways of either being more willing to subside the HW or being more efficient on the contracts and volume so they save some more on the cost and can have that turned either in like a 10-20% power advantage, 50 USD less price for same subside or use that saved money to grant more exclusives, invest in their studios, etc.

What they don't do is delay their launch 6 months giving the company that beat them 3 times time to get traction just to be a little stronger. Sure they could delay 2 years and have a significant more powerful HW, but would still probably be same tech so all that difference won't be that noticeable but missing on the market for 2 years will (while X1 is dwindling).

1) There are plenty of games that don't end up in discussions for GOTY and are top quality. GOTY is dependant on a persons opinion/opinions. What I rate will be different to what you rate so that's no difference to how critics rate there GOTY. Hmm to name some games that would be GOTY discussions.. whatever you refer to discussion, but ill answer that anyway.. lets see, Ori and the Blind Forest, Forza Horizon 3 and 4, Gears 5 and I haven't even been home from work yet to look at my library of games, I am still at work writing this. (Ori isn't made by a 1st party studio however its a 1st party IP so lets not excuse that from this discussion of yours)

2) Well if I answered correctly with your point than great, you are agreeing that Xbox focus on different type of genres than Sony. Let me put it out to you that there are many type of game styles that aren't just Story Telling, Openworld 3rd person games. But lets digress.

3) A couple Studios? More like half a dozen studios. A bit of a understatement on your behalf. That's a huge difference in output, its pretty logically and obvious that 15 Studios will deliver more 1st party content than 6 Studios. If you think otherwise than I wont convince you, ill let you wait and see.

4) A very double standard post. You are trying to defend a game like GTS which was heavily criticized at launch just like the games you tend to nit-pick on, like Sea of thieves, State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3. For the record I have nothing against GTS, I was doing what you are doing and picking games that got criticized and used them the exact same way you are with the Xbox titles. What's wrong with those Xbox games and why does GTS get a pass?

And if anyone points out that Nextbox isn't significantly more powerful than X1X Microsoft will reply: "Xbox One X? Never heard. Are you a madman? Xbox One X .. pfuh.. what a silly name. There is no such thing."

Has "secret sauce" been said yet?