it's almost as if they are making shit up out of thin air... almost as if...

Show, don't tell

If I were to buy an Xbone for somebody for Xmas, no way in hell am I going to buy them a Scorpio. This just gives us cheapskate gift givers a cheaper way to achieving the same outcome. Options are good. It's not like those gift takers will even have the latest and greatest tech to take advantage of a Scorpio or even notice or care. Beggers can't be choosers. 😒

"During the video for Project Scorpio, two minutes of puffery dedicated to Microsoft's bright Christmas 2017, there is a man who speaks with his mouth but betrays everything with his eyes. "This doesn't mean we're leaving the Xbox One behind," he says, but the truth is there to see as his eyes flick away from the camera."

Heh.

A $300 video game console is a cheapskate gift?

TLDR

What mixed messages?

That's an indication that Scorpio may have been a knee jerk reaction to Neo, the latter for all intents and purposes seemed to be just a PS4 with some added features like the PSX (enhanced PS2) and a fix for any performance issues. The circus of the PR with Scorpio suggests it was a reaction to it and not a planned thing.

This reminds me a lot of the launch also.

I had this problem before launch with the X1. I was set to buy 2 of the same console right away this generation because I wanted to go mostly digital on the games that I could coop but not couch coop on with my son.

Meaning I wanted to buy the game once and have family share to play with my son, him upstairs and myself down. What happened? All the nonsense back and forth on X1 was ridiculous. I got an email that I was losing my family share live plan and now I could pay $60 per yer per person or for me an increase from $99 to $240. What the heck??

Even worse I saw an article that game share would be gone except on the same machine. Meaning yes I could buy digital and my son could play it but only on the one console. I even called support for clarification only to be told that I could not digitally share my games via two consoles in the same home.

After this I saw another article of Sony stating we will let you share your games and even released an FAQ on how to do it. By this point I was so frustrated I just canceled X1 preorders and swapped to ps4's.

At the end of it all I see youtube videos after release of people doing what I wanted. Confused message can definitely hurt sales. This whole thing of fergussen stating the slim will make games better then another exec saying no it wont and spencer stating different things for the scorpio smacks of the exact same weird messaging. Can they not just have a meeting and get a clear message to give out?

It's literally pointed out in each paragraph

It'll be $199 by next year. Compared to $600, yes.

If they want a PS4, fuck Neo. They are getting the baby version.