MS is not in the position where they should be upsetting devs. They're going to need all the support they can get. And devs can choose not to support them, just like some stayed away from the XBO until they changed their indie policies.

There were no leaks that stated that the PS4 was less powerful. Sony announced 8GB months earlier than anyone knew concrete XBO specs. It's pretty obvious MS got caught with their pants down, because they still had "XBO" demos running on HW at E3 that didn't match the final specs. And the camera was not coming bundled for PS4. You can spout whatever you wish to believe, but that doesn't make it fact.

If MS knows what the PS5 is going to have, then there's no need for secrecy. They should already have more powerful devkits in all the devs hands. Just like Warren, you're just spreading damage control and wishful thinking in order to ignore that MS is obviously behind.

1) Devs are not the ones that make the calls, devs need the consoles to sell there products and with Xboxe's Xcloud, GamePass, Azure and Windows eco system, it will be there loss to skip out on what could be a huge lost opportunity to sell there products. This happens almost every gen with Nintendo where 3rd party companies struggle with Nintendo's policies and newer innovations yet guess what, they still flock to what sells hot. If Xbox is huge next gen, devs will bite the bullet to release there games on it. Besides, you are making a bigger deal out of this than you should. We are talking about hidden specs, not some forced innovation or policy that devs have to be forced to use. Its just that games wont be as optimised at launch due to the unknown specs.

2) PS4 was going to be a 4gig system, the X1 was always going to be an 8gig system. You don't think that has any weight on Sony switching to 8gigs GDDR5? That would have bottlenecked the PS4 hard if Sony stayed with the 4gigs while the X1 uses 8gigs of ram. 

3) Why would MS allow Sony to see there specs? So Sony can switch up and change? MS are not that stupid. You will get the full specs on Scarlett the moment its too late into development for Sony to switch up. If MS didn't care about what specs they are using next gen than they would announce it but they seem focus in making sure Scarlett has a power edge. Its called the waiting game and we will wait and see.

Why are you so obsessed with this 4GB nonsense?

Look, what happened was that Sony asked Samsung two questions:

1) Are you going to mass produce 4GBit chips?

2) When can we buy them wholesale?

This happend long before production of the PS4 started. And by long, I mean LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. The fairy tale about Sony switching from 4GB to 8GB in the last minute is just that, a fairy tale. The really cool thing about this fairy tale is that Sony was able to keep everyone (except insider fst party) believing the 4G storyline right to the end. Don't you think Cerny really didn't know what it takes to have enough Ram (likely after testing with 2/4/8 GB)?

The next obsession of yours seems to be power. First of all, 10% more power means 10% more expensive to manufacture. You seem to think 10% is not enough bragging loudness, so you can go to 20% more power. Now we are talking about 30% more expensive. If that is still not enough for you, take 30% more power, now we are in the 60% more expensive region. Now you see why the PS4 and the XBox1 came out to be of the same power: You can wish all the power you want, but both companies have a console budget, and console budgets were and are roughly the same.

(That doesn't mean Microsoft is willing to throw money down the gutter. The $/Euro/Pound 99 XBox1 bf bundle cost them a cool $100M in a day...).

Your next obsession seems to be both companies waiting for the other one to reveal first, then change specs to one-up the other guy. This concept is so laughable, I don't even know where to start with. Neither Microsoft nor Sony have given any thoughts about what the other company is developing. (The tech people in both companies know exactly what can be done with available technology, so why even bother fiddling with the other guy? Btw, looking at Kinect2 and the X1X, Microsoft seems to actually have the upper hand in the tech department).  The only constant problem they have is keeping development with AMD under wraps, as AMD has been simultaneously developing for both companies (that could result in some pretty awkward in-house situations I might guess).

I believe you are correct but for the wrong reasons and your conclusion is also incorrect.  MS is doing the cloud but not as a replacement for hardware.  If anything, the cloud looks to be an extension of the ecosystem not something of a replacement anytime soon.  If you read the Eurogamer article on XCloud you see that MS isn't trying to do what Google is doing and they are more focused on allowing Xbox games the ability to be played on mobile hardware like your Phone or Tablet.  MS is looking at the Cloud as an extension of their games platform and it very evident by Phill comments that Hardware still plays a big role in MS future.

Gamepass is also another extension of the ecosystem but it's geared to allow MS to concentrate on games and building a library of AA, AAA and Indie games to entice gamers to subscribe to the service which then pays for itself allowing basically what you see with Netflix where they can produce their own content from low to high quality content.  I am sure MS has a baseline of subscribers but I believe if they can get 30% of all Xbox users to sub to Gamepass the service will pay for all First and Second party content from your AAA to AA games.

I think i figured out how MS is gonna surprise. Not just Sony. Everyone will be surprised.

*insert Gary Oldman everyone gif*

It's not going to be one SKU. Not gonna be two SKUs. Not three. Not four. But five different SKUs. Why? No one can complain. Everybody will be satisfied. You want max powa? U covered. U want no disc drive? U covered. U want low low price? U cowered. U want kinect 3.0? U covered. U want deluxe surprise edition? U got it.

The masterplan to beat Sony. MS will be better in every category... somehow in some way. They will play to their strength. At L-Day they might have 'no gaemz' but hardware there will be plenty.

Imagine actually thinking that developers might pass on a console at launch because dev kits are supposedly late. Reminds me of when that Transformers game was rumored to be canceled on Xbone early this gen and multiple people here were ecstatic, one even claimed that “it begins” as they actually expected major devs and publishers to stop supporting Xbone 😆

I really think people take these type of reports and just go off on all types of crazy tangents. Its not like MS has not been in this market for over a decade now. To believe that support will suddenly dry up because a dev kit is late seems silly. A lot of working relationships MS have with devs are already done and speculations that MS is frustrating developers so they are going to go take their toys away seems even more silly. I guess this would be a bigger deal if the machines were really custom like a PS2 or PS3 but not today's Consoles. Developers are pretty much coding to MS API and do not code to the mettle so as long as they keep within the specs provided by MS, having full silcone at this time probably more an annoyance then anything else.

Is the Lockhart really a next gen machine? I was thinking it could just be a xbox one x redesing. Just equivalent performance but with Navi and ryzen. It might just be still called the xbox one x slim. Cut like $200 of the price then anaconda be $500.