Yeah, hopefully Booty is wrong and more than just Halo Infinite and Hellblade 2 will be developed to take full advantage of Series X specs. 1st/2nd party games need to target Series X as the lead platform, and then from there be scaled down to run on Series S, XB1 X, and finally XB1, even if a porting studio is required to handle the XB1 port, since it is more than 10x weaker than Series X in terms of GPU and therefore will need lower quality assets developed in order for the games to run on the system (lower quality textures, shadow maps, character models, etc.). Getting a truly next-gen game to run on XB1 will be like getting a current gen AAA to run on Switch, there is a reason why porting studios have been used to pull that off in most cases, it requires the development of lower quality art assets, which takes extra dev time, so most of those Switch ports got contracted out to porting studios because the original studios don't want to take the time to develop lower quality art assets.

People talk about scalability. We saw plenty of cross-gen games that made use of scalability at the beginning of this gen, and none of them looked as good as proper 8th gen/PC only games. A prime example is Assassin's Creed 4, it was a cross-gen game designed to run on 7th and 8th gen systems, and though the game didn't look bad on 8th gen consoles, it doesn't even come close to Assassin's Creed Origins or Odyssey graphically, which were made on a brand new engine designed from the ground up for 8th gen hardware. Assassin's Creed Vikings this Holiday will have the exact same problem, the game is rumored to be cross-gen, available on 8th and 9th gen systems, but because it will be using the AC Origins/Odyssey engine, an 8th gen engine, the 9th gen versions will basically just be PC Ultra settings at 4k, they will not even come close graphically to the first proper 9th gen/PC only Assassin's Creed game which will likely release in 2022. 

I have some doubts that MS studios being forced to make XSX exclusives will somehow change game design approach in one moment. As I've said earlier, people are getting overhyped about SSD a lot, it won't totally eliminate loading sections. You can just take a look at how PC games with NVMe SSDs work and you will see that it still isn't enough to remove loading screens. I bet that SSDs in consoles will be worse than what currently is possible on PC.

You can't just use games from now running on PC on a NVMe to compare it with what is possible on the next consoles when devs develop the games with a NVMe in mind.

Right now devs don't give a fuck about NVMe and all it does better happens automatically

And why do you even mention SSD all the time? I'm always mentioning the horrible CPU which stopped devs this gen already to do some stuff. We had discussions about Jaguar and how damn important a new CPU is the whole gen and now it's good enough for "next gen" games?

How does this not stop devs in game decissions? Like I said, it's not about graphics or resolutions. We talk about the CPU here. 

I was using it as an example of how cross-gen scalability works. I used a 3rd party game as an example because there were very few 1st party cross-gen games in 2013 and 2014 this gen, the only one I can think of is Forza Horizon 2, and it didn't make use of a scalability, the 360 version was a port done by another studio, Sumo Digital, which made use of significantly lower quality assets than the XB1 version. The point of my statement was not to say that this decision by MS will hold back 3rd parties, because many of them will choose to release cross-gen games the first few years anyway, the point was to show how making use of cross-gen scalability on Microsoft's 1st and 2nd party exclusives instead of developing XS exclusives or developing the XB1 and XS versions of these games separately will negatively affect the graphics of those 1st/2nd party games on XS compared to Sony's PS5 exclusives. 

There are plenty of examples of AAA cross-gen scalability from early this gen besides Assassin's Creed 4; Battlefield 4, Far Cry 4, Thief, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain, CoD Ghosts, etc., and when you look at all of them, the graphics of the XB1/PS4 versions of those scalable cross-gen games don't come close to the graphics of proper XB1 and PS4 exclusives or cross-gen games that made use of porting for the last gen versions instead of scalability. 

You would think so, that is why Matt Booty's statement started this whole controversy:

"Our approach is to pick one or two IP that we’re going to focus on and make sure that they’re there at the launch of the console, taking advantage of all the features. And for us that’s going to be Halo Infinite, which is a big opportunity. It’s the first time in over 15 years that we’ll have a Halo title launching in sync with a new console. And that team is definitely going to be doing things to take advantage of [Series X]."

That statement by Booty makes it sound like only Halo Infinite and possibly 1 other 1st/2nd party Holiday 2020-Holiday 2021 game will take full advantage of the extra power of Xbox Series. Assuming that Hellblade 2 is the 2nd game that he mentions, considering the level of graphics on display in the in-engine reveal trailer, that means that the other likely Holiday 2020-Holiday 2021 1st/2nd party games like Forza Motorsport 8 (Holiday 2020), the rumored Gears horror game, Forza Horizon 5 (Q3 2021 most likely), The Initiative's new IP (it's being revealed in 2020, so I would assume it will will release in 2021), Playground's rumored Fable reboot (it has been in development even longer than The Initiative game, so if The Initiative game is being revealed in 2020, Fable likely will as well, and that makes a 2021 release likely) will probably all be made with cross-gen scalability. 

On a related note, do we think that the first 2 Halo Infinite trailers were designed with Xbox One X spec in mind, or with Xbox Series X spec in mind?

If those trailer are designed to show what the game will look like on Xbox One X, and we can expect even better graphics from Halo Infinite on Xbox Series X, then I will be very pleased. If however those 2 trailers are a look at what the game will look like on Series X, I am a bit disappointed. Hopefully they are showing approximately the Xbox One X spec.

Yeah, it's kind of confusing. In part of the interview he is talking about the first couple of years of Xbox Series' life, saying that all 1st/2nd party games will be cross-gen for those first couple of years. In this part though, he says "at launch", so it's hard to tell if he literally only means Holiday 2020 with this statement, or if he is referring to the entire 2 year period of cross-gen releases when he says that only Halo Infinite will take full advantage of Xbox Series features. If he is just referring to Holiday 2020 launch games, and Halo Infinite and hopefully Forza Motorsport 8 will be the 1-2 games that he says will take full advantage of Xbox Series features, then it's not so bad. If he is referring to all of the 1st/2nd party games in the 2020-2021 2 year window he mentioned elsewhere in the interview though, that is very bad. Either way, hopefully Forza Motorsport 8 is taking full advantage of Xbox Series. The Forza Motorsport series has faced heavy criticism all gen for lack of innovation, the last thing that 8 needs is to be held back by last-gen hardware. Being held back by last gen will hurt more than just graphics for Motorsport 8, it can hurt the driving physics, the driver AI, the weather simulations, and more. Turn 10 had better be building it to take full advantage of Xbox Series, and then scale it down from there with what is essentially an Xbox One port. 

I would be surprised if they discontinue Xbox One in 2020, leaving only existing stock to be sold. It's not impossible, but I doubt it will happen. Will probably be discontinued in late 2021 I would think. 

I'd agree that standard Xbox One has reached a point where it likely isn't going to sell much more, unless maybe they can get it down to $150 for the S and $100 for the all-digital (which is unlikely), but I'd say that Xbox One X still has some sales potential considering that it was going for $350 this Holiday. If they can get it down to $300, or better yet, $250, I think they can move a good many XB1 X units Holiday 2020 and into 2021. But we'll have to see what happens, don't know if it's possible for them to hit $250 on XB1 X Holiday 2020. If they can hit $250, will seem like a good cheaper alternative to a $350 Series S, but if Series S is aiming for $300, then yeah, they might as well just discontinue Xbox One X, nobody will buy it if it only costs $50 less than Series S.