After how things went down at the start of this gen, MS would be pretty foolish to let Sony get the jump on them again in terms of power.

Look at the fridge again. It sucks in air at the bottom and blows it out on top. Best design for cooling it as hot air rises anyways. Now there is a disc drive slot which has to be on the front somewhere, obviously.

So there are two ways to place the fridge: Either upside or sideways, disc drive either along the top OR bottom edge (depending on how the drive is installed in the fridge). Placing the fridge upside is not an option as it is too tall.

TV enclosures always expect air to be blown out the back, so the walls are on the sides. Placing the fridge sideways means that air is sucked in and blown out sideways where the tv enclosure walls are. Bad idea, unless you have an unusually wide tv enclosure, but most of these thingies are made to enclose standard width hifi equipment.

Yea, I wouldn't be able to stick it in my stand.  It's too high for my first shelf.  The 2nd shelf that houses my Pro at the moment might be able to take the height, but the width will be a problem, as it is a little wider than the Pro.  Too much to one side and it hinders the air coming in.  To much to the other and all the heat stays near the console itself. 

I really think this is the "hot" product Jason Schreier said it was.  In order to combat the resent news that some devs weren't happy with how behind MS was with getting the Scarlett info/devkits to them, they wanted something to try to show that they weren't behind.  So, you got Phil saying he has one at home already and is playing on it.  And you have the sudden Game Awards announcement (kind of an odd place to announce a console) where they just went with the design that they had at the moment without really thinking it through.  I mean, this would work fine if you just sit your consoles next to your TV in your bedroom, but not in quite a few TV stands that are going to be in the living room.  The PS5, if its like the devkit, will have no problem.  Sucks in air from top center and blows it out the side towards the back.  Almost like a hot rod.

Yea, I wouldn't be able to stick it in my stand.  It's too high for my first shelf.  The 2nd shelf that houses my Pro at the moment might be able to take the height, but the width will be a problem, as it is a little wider than the Pro.  Too much to one side and it hinders the air coming in.  To much to the other and all the heat stays near the console itself. 

I really think this is the "hot" product Jason Schreier said it was.  In order to combat the resent news that some devs weren't happy with how behind MS was with getting the Scarlett info/devkits to them, they wanted something to try to show that they weren't behind.  So, you got Phil saying he has one at home already and is playing on it.  And you have the sudden Game Awards announcement (kind of an odd place to announce a console) where they just went with the design that they had at the moment without really thinking it through.  I mean, this would work fine if you just sit your consoles next to your TV in your bedroom, but not in quite a few TV stands that are going to be in the living room.  The PS5, if its like the devkit, will have no problem.  Sucks in air from top center and blows it out the side towards the back.  Almost like a hot rod.

It's still 11 months out from release, haven't changes been made to console specs relatively late in the game in the past? I can't say for certain, but I remember reading PS4 was initially gonna have 4GB of RAM, Saturn's 3D capabilities were beefed up at the 11th hour when they learned was PS1 was capable of, etc?

If you really believe that a company as big as MS is going to, over the course of about 2-3 weeks or so, decide to rush an announcement on a product that they weren't actually ready to make, all because of some rumors on gaming forums - that will be seen by a ridiculously tiny fraction of perspective buyers - about frustrations on lack of dev kits out there…..well you're hopelessly naive, to put it kindly.

You might not think so, but I showed this to 4 guys at work, and they all basically said the exact same thing.  "That thing looks dumb and it's too freaking big."  One of them being a 360 and One owner.  They all liked the PS5's devkit look, which I definitely hope is the final design after that conversation.  And buying another piece of furniture is a a strange demand, when someone has just spent $560 on a console and game.

As for the Switch, that's a completely different thing.  It's meant to be taken off and on the stand, and the stand is small and light.  There's really no problem tucking it behind the TV, especially when you have a large one that takes up most of the space on top of the stand, which is what I do when my buddy brings his over.  But, when you have a piece of tech that is supposed to be stationary, visible, and easily accessible to insert games, tucking it behind the TV is a ridiculous solution for a stupid problem MS made for themselves. 

It's still 11 months out from release, haven't changes been made to console specs relatively late in the game in the past? I can't say for certain, but I remember reading PS4 was initially gonna have 4GB of RAM, Saturn's 3D capabilities were beefed up at the 11th hour when they learned was PS1 was capable of, etc?

Considering they have rushed consoles out the door in the past, I think you are the naive one here.

I'm pretty sure it was more than rumor, because after the 8GB announcement, I thought we got reports that devs were pleasantly surprised.  My guess is they wanted to go with 8GB, but the prices of GDDR5 may have prevented them at first.  Once it started to drop, they pulled the trigger.