1) That's a odd thing to say. Because a game doesn't end up in a GOTY discussion has nothing to do with a quality built game. Also GOTY awards can be very bias. Look at the Game awards.. no Devil May Cry 5, Gears 5 or Luigi's Mansion 3.. why? cannot tell me those games are not quality deserving games, instead we get Control and Death Stranding nominated etc. Anyway lets digress. There are plenty of quality games out each year and yet GOTY awards always shaft those games that are more niche into sub genres like racing games. Sony use the popular genre to win these awards and so does Nintendo, its very rare we see a Racing game or FPS game win GOTY these days aside from Overwatch which took the world by storm, other wise, majority win it are 3rd person games.  

2) I dont understand your point, its clear MS focus on different type games. They never really focused on big story telling 3rd person games, in fact they don't even have one unless you count Quantum Break which isn't made by MS. Gears 5 is the first to actually achieve a campaign similar to these games and that released at the end of the X1 life. Anyway lets digress.

3) They just brought the studios, are you expecting results a year later? Honestly AA and AAA games can take more than a year to make, which goes to prove my point, if the quality of Xbox games are not up to speed than they will be releasing games on a yearly basis, but know, there games take just as long as any other AAA developer to make. The studios they brought are finishing up there current projects and are now working on there next game, this takes time, doesnt take a rocket scientist to work that out.

Also you continue to nit-pick games like Sea of thieves, Crack Down 3 and State of Decay 2. For starters, what are you comparing SoTs to? Its a solid built title and is easily a AAA built game. Crack Down 3 is a developer disaster so fair enough with that one but again not made by Xbox. State of Decay 2 is a $30 AA game made by a Indy studio. I can nit-pick games too, The Order, Knack 1 and 2, Days Gone, Concrete Genie, Drive Club, GTS, Killzone and more which also copped a lot of criticism, but hey, why compare apples to oranges. Sony dominate the 3rd person genre this gen, no question about it, but you can claim Xbox dominated the Racing genre this gen and Halo is still one of the better shooters this gen, even if the franchise it on decline. Its still reviews a lot better than Sony's Halo Killer Killzone.

Surprise how? They ll unsuspectedly send a package to Sony HQ, and then at a specific momemt a butt naked Phil Spencer pops out yelling "Supplies!"

Given the contracts needed for sourcing parts and the getting all the chips fabricated, complete hardware decisions are likely locked in already.

And given Direct X and Windows connection, I'm wagering MSFT has probably issued a performance target, and studios can create on PC and make optimizations later on a formal Dev kit.

I doubt they don't have them yet. If they truly don't, then they're probably waiting for some hardware part finalize (Zen 3, RDNA 2...), or their OS and debugging tools ain't ready yet, but that I really doubt.

If true, it's a bit of a double-edged Sword: It might give Microsoft a more powerful console than that of Sony if they are still waiting for the parts, but the delays for the SDK means that porting games to it will start at a later date unless they can use an One X dev kit as a stopgap.

I would say it is more worrisome that this can lead to some delay on their games or inferior version on multiplatforms.

All surprise they want (and hiding dev kits would only make a difference if they expect Sony to try and copy them by breaking NDAs, and experience tells me that when you fear people do that is because you are actively doing it).

So should we understand by this that MS have made their console by spying info on PS5 and don't want a counter? That on the same week of they not being worried about PS5 in the least.

This makes no sense because console hardware can be upgraded beyond devkit specs late on its development cycle, as we've seen many times with the X360, PS4, XB1 etc.

As long as MS provides an accurate target for developers to work with, delaying dev kits is irrelevant. As multiple insiders have said, it will be around E3 of next year before Microsoft or Sony would provide final dev kits anyway. So you're talking four or five months tops for devs to have access to final dev kits before launch, and a much shorter time frame to work with final dev kits as games are finished well before launch day.

lol @ Microsoft fearing NDA breaches because they have been doing it. Both companies have so many sources and information, there's no need for either to get people to break an NDA.

All big 3 start working on their next console when they launch the current one. That doesn't prevent HW to be delayed though.

Sony didn't play spec guessing. They ramped up RAM very late because of price reduction on RAM, and only a few internal devs were informed of it.

Don't worry, both companies will find a way to make the claim.

Let's say one have 0,5Tf more then they can call it, or their RAM is a little faster or bigger, anything they will use to claim the prize.

Although Sony with PS4 didn't use it in any ad, they let the games show it. MS was the one that brought the attention to themselves when they said that no way in hell they would let Sony have a console 50% more powerful or that the resolution would be different.

I don't think this kind of dick measuring really matters at this point all that much. In terms of power, we have reached a point where adding even more shaders or whatnot doesn't really make or break anything anymore. Imagination and creativity is the bottleneck going forward. Besides, it is very possible that we will see mid-gen upgrade models pop up again, so if you are running after specs, then it's just an unending game of leap frog and the games themselves will turn out to be the deciding factor.