Nope, just a screw up.

What good is hype if everybody hates your console and refuses to buy it?

This is really a no brainer.
People higher up in the MS food chain simply asked one another "Where can we get the most money out of?" Because that is all that counts in the end.
Is it the hardcore gamer that buys maybe a game every now and then - or is it the couch potato sitting in front of the tv for hours (and roughly 90% of Americans fall in that cathegory)? The result is obvious. You can milk the couch potato much, much easier in many, many more ways than the gamer. And we haven't even heard anything about those "clever ads" that WILL start popping up left and right while the tv is on, once XBox One controls the potatoes..

Casuals will might buy it.  The bad press = good press theory does not work in games, only music.  Microsoft will need to bring the games harder than even Nintendo to make up for this.  And no matter of games can sway me to buy a system that blocks used games and isn't backwards compatible.  No amount of cable tv fluff is gonna sway me.

And I bought the original Xbox day one.. I waited for the store to open!

They just need to bring games that Xbox gamers been buying the whole cycle and more. Speculations and flaming shouldn't be part of these discussions any way, they're not informative.

I'm very disappointed with the XboxOne at the moment. I never bought a M$ console at launch and it will stay that way with the next console.

M$ screw this one up very bad.

Uhmmm... not everyone hates or refuses to buy it.

Few things...

1. Pretty much all console exclusive gamers can be considered "casuals" in the grand scheme of things, especially the ones that don't get the benefits of digital distribution and why a DRM has to exist to protect software. just because one plays God of War and COD 5 hours a day doesn't really make them any less casual in understanding how technology works and why certain things are possible and why they are not.

2. There is absolutely no indication that will make us believe that XB1 will be any less of a gaming machine than PS4. Infact they should share the exact same library 90% of the time with a few exclusives going both ways so fanboys can argue on forums which is better. The difference is that XB1 will do a few more things that PS4 may not be able to do with Kinect, TV etc... Below is a handy pic that is demonstrating my point.

In terms of the OP, I think their conference went exactly as planned. They got the word out to the public and demosntrated a cool piece of hardware that has wider appeal than a sstandalone gaming box. this is something Sony absolutely failed to do with its conference... Gamers are a very forgiving bunch. Give them a few killer games they can't get anywhere else and they will be saying "used games are for suckers".

Screw Up. Even Wii U sales just increased 875% on amazon.

I think the conference was fine, even if it had an intended audience that wasn't me.

Where Microsoft screwed up was with the disjointed post-conference Q&A. It was all over the place and confusing. You can't tell me that was intentional. They just were not clear at all. The result was people being apprehensive about the XO, which is not good, as everyone who hears something bad does not always hear the clarification later.

Still, it won't make a big difference, especially if they're much more clear at E3. They just need to get everyone on the same page and have them stay on-script.

The reveal was bad but the screw up came afterwards with all the flip flopping information that fueled more speculation. For me the TV features shown in the X1 reveal is useless since it will only be available for NA. Its more than likely not to reach my region.