Microsoft wasn't silent on the DRM issue. 

They never said "No comment", they said "We're not prepared to talk about this now.  We'll have more on that at E3."  Then once E3 came it became a trickle of information.

I'm going to be completely honest.  Everything, to me, is adding up that Microsoft is in a desperate rush to get the features they want in the OS.  I received some confirmation to this effect last week in an e-mail conversation I had with someone inside the Xbox Team.  My impression is that Microsoft is literally trying to hammer out the deliverable features as quickly as it can finish them.  Why was the TV feature front and center?  Because I think Microsoft had been working on it the longest.  In fact, I would even hedge bets that originally that was planned for MediaRoom and Microsoft at some point decided to double-down and make it a feature of the Xbox One.  The stuff talked about at E3 was App snapping, a feature of the OS that had to be hammered out early on.  Everything else except the games was discussed from a 10,000 ft perspective.  It was just an overview.

Contrast that to the Xbox 360's reveal and E3 presentation and you see these huge, glaring omissions about features and services.  The hardware specs were known long before the PS3 and Xbox 360 ever hit the show floor.  Not speculative numbers, solid, confirmed numbers.  The performance of each machine had been caclulated so that you could actually figure out before either console was released which one was actually going to offer better performance. 

The lack of information this time around is glaring, epsecially on Microsoft's part.  I've personally never see Microsoft so far back on their heels.  I don't think hardware was the setback, as had been rumored.  I honestly think Microsoft thought they had another year before Sony would launch the PS4 so they hadn't earnestly begun the software development.  Because what I see being behind is the feature set of the software, not the hardware. 

And just to be clear, since Sony gets to clarify terminology, the issue was never DRM.  The DRM was and always has been essentially the same as with the Xbox 360.  If Microsoft wanted to, it could, enable sharing on the Xbox 360 of the digital content.  However, in order to do so it would also have to force the Xbox 360 to connect to Xbox LIVE periodically.  The challenge for Microsoft was if you are borrowing content, do you still have the rights to it and if you don't, I need to do something with that content.  For that, they needed the periodic connection to Xbox LIVE. 

Anyone who uses the One Guide (TV) will need routine connection to the Internet as well, as the guide gets updated on a 24 hour basis. 

DRM was not a real issue.  The connectivity that sharing/lending in a digital library required was the issue.  I kept up on the patents.  A required connection was never a requirement of any of Microsoft's DRM/licensing patents.  Like this issue for Sony though, Microsoft did not get in front of it, and it did not control the issue.  Once it got away from Microsoft it was too late.  I don't think this issue is serious enough to get away from Sony, but as I said they could easily kill it by just saying once and for all what it is. 

I think for the most part, everyone on both sides of the debate (Big deal/not a big deal) have come to the conclusion that whatever it ends up being it isn't a serious issue.  If they both have the same 5GB available to them, games will essentially be the same.  If one has more and another has less, then more than likely multiplatform games will use the smaller amount to base their games on.

The secretive nature of such mundane things after the consoles have been revealed is absurd.  That criticism is lobbed against Microsoft as much as it is against Sony. 

This. If they have to answer this rumour, the week-end isn't the most appropriate time to do it. If the rumours are totally or partially true, then answering them making things clear is the best thing to do, if they are totally false, the best thing will be to reaffirm the true specifications to stop the rumours, but without ever explicitly citing the rumours themselves and their creators.

What does Sony remaining silent when people wanted to know what they were doing in regards to DRM have to do with what Microsoft did? He wasn't saying anything about Microsoft. He was pointing out, as several people on this thread have so far, that this is not unusual for Sony to remain quiet about something that they weren't ready to talk about and how quiet they stayed on the DRM issue for months until E3 is a good example. 

As far as Microsoft is concerned, it didn't help them at all that every time they went to talk about it they either couldn't get their story straight with each other or someone didn't tell Mattrick to just shut the hell up. If Microsoft would have stayed quiet, collected themselves, made sure everyone was on the same page, and sent ONE guy out with a thorough script to do the talking while laying it all out this whole Summer would likely be having different conversations on policies right now. That's not how they handled it. Microsoft had several opportunities when they spoke about their policies to give in-depth explanations as to why their policies were good and what did we get? "DAAARRRR DUN LYKE EET?! BUY TREE SIXTA DEN!!!". I think some people would have preferred them to just stay quiet until they had someone who wasn't mentally handicapped to talk about it.

As you pretty much said, this is something that really won't matter if they announce it's 5 gigs or 6 gigs. So then why would Sony want to be swift with an explanation for something that ultimately isn't a serious issue? It's not like them announcing it's only 5 gigs and generally confirming DF's story means that people now have to have a connection to play the PS4. I don't think Sony is worried about people 'preorder cancelling' over this story.

The point is communication.

The earlier and more concisely detailed your communication, the better.  Always.  In every situation.

The day both these consoles were revealed, they should have been prepared to talk.  They may not have needed to disclose every detail all at once, but everything should have been planned, on paper, and ready to be discussed.  If things changed in the meantime, they changed, but to be hemming and hawing months away from release is just incredible. 

Don't you think it's interesting that most people having issues with any of this are the ones who whined and complained about people having issues with how MS handled their reveal of the XBO?  Basically, the core MS fans.

I'd rather trust a dev that's working on the console than Leadbetter.

Who the hell is Leadbetter anyways...an "insider". lol okay.