I want MS to compete next gen. I don't want another walk over. Sony took their foot off the peddle once they knew they got the market. It's better for the consumers if MS front up.

So Schreier has talked with every 3rd party studio now. Ok.

Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with secrecy. Xbox division is being careful now because of the last launch and they are right to do so. That's the only way to be one step ahead of Sony. Also, the Scarlett will launch with Halo Infinite, that alone will be a big advantage, hot or not.

I really don't know what Microsoft's strategy is anymore. It seems like they are all over the place. On the one hand they are investing heavily in xcloud and gamepass. But they also seem to want to have the most powerful console when Scarlett releases. They seem kind of scattered.

If they are waiting to release a more powerful system than the PS5, then it wouldn't surprise me. Not only in Microsoft obsessively image/marketing focused, but they think of gaming in PC terms. Games made for the PC are designed to be upgrade/downgraded based on hardware specs. It is easy to make these modifications. Games made specifically for console don't necessarily upgrade/downgrade so easily. But they are likely thinking of games in PC terms.

Yes, probably changes in the strategy - like the mentioned 2 SKUs becoming only 1 - have made they a little delayed on the schedule to have the dev kits and final HW available for devs...

Just to remember that in less than 6 months they will already me manufacturing the customer HW to prepare for launch. They have to make prototypes, prepare lines, have contracts for parts signed, etc. None of this happens in 1 month.

Actually the secrecy on last launch made it worse for them.

If the rumors of the always online and TV TV TV were more spreed and received more backlash MS could have changed the policies and focus before anything was public so they wouldn't have been hit so hard.

Devs are making these games on PCs. As an actual developer from Moon Studios said in one of the Resetera threads on this issue, the specs are pretty much known. Whether you have a dev kit this early doesn’t matter. Final dev kits for both consoles aren’t coming until 2020.

Agreed, let's be honest it's not going to be much different from last gen. The systems Sony and MS put out are going to be very similar.

Both have Zen 2 CPU's, both have NAVI GPU's, both have SSD's, both have some form of Ray Tracing support. Not having the Scarlett dev kit isn't going to be much of a hurdle. As long as they get it in time to make adjustments and optimisations for the few system specific quirks. (I.E things like the XBO's ESRAM). Even if they didn't get it till May I don't see how the games would suffer much.

Thats BS.... DonFerrari explains why below.

This.

If anything secrecy also hurts early game adaption from newer titles, esp from the indie + smaller scene stuff (aa studios), who wont have time to optimise and code for a scarlet dev kit, because their just forgotten/left out in the dark.

If currently few AAA studios have them, and the rest of those guys talking to Jason Schreier are complaining,
its gonna be worse for the small guys out there.

This could lead to another "tv,tv,tv,halo,tv,sports,tv,gears,sports,tv" type situation.

The straws being grasped in this thread to make it as negative as possible 😆

Supposedly late access to dev kits can alienate some indie devs and would be as big as the Xbone reveal blunder, which was a catastrophic event that shifted the entire generation.

The guy y’all are quoting is obviously talking about hardware secrecy, not batshit insane software policies or software features.

I have a feeling that the PS is going to be, yet again, the home for indies, as MS courts AAA devs to help push GamePass/xCloud.  AAA devs are definitely going to be getting the priority for devkits since MS is running behind schedule.