Yeah these are probably controlled leaks. But the thing is they won’t need these leaks if they decided to just do more show lol.

The rumour of io making an exclusive is interesting because that was a big studio that had acquisition rumours for quite some time which makes me wonder over the past few years if all these rumours about acquisitions were actually Xbox setting up exclusive deals instead and "insiders" just presumed acquisitions because of the spree MS had in 2018.

It's not about deciding to show more, it's about being able to show more. MS will get to a point soon enough where they'll be able to just consistently show new footage from games they got in development, but they're just not there yet. So you get leaks instead.

MS should just make a public statement that they have sea with IOI, Sony just did that with Firewalk and Haven.

Oh man, it's beautiful. I may have to get that pro controller. I need to quickly try the demo while I can too.

Nice that the Switch will be kicking off the year strong once again. Though hopefully there'll be a lot more to look forward to on the back end this time.

Damn, there is quite a difficulty spike in Octopath Traveler.
The first chapter of every character was pretty easy. Only the boss caused minor problems (downed maybe one of my party members if any).

Started the first main mission in chapter two and the regular enemies are already quite a bit more challenging (but fair regarding the recomended level) but holy smokes the boss is way out of my league. The recommended level for the mission is 23 which is exactly the level of my main character (with the others being one or two levels below).
The boss and his two lackeys inflict about 50% damage to one of my characters in one blow, so everyone is down in two hits. Also his lackeys are preventing my efforts to "break" the boss. In the end I couldn't even take out one of the three enemies.

It feels like I'm either 10 levels too low or I'm badly equipped. Here's the thing though, equipment is really really expensive. Since monsters barely drop any money and the rewards from side quests are 

Thing is xCloud simply isn't a great option for many people in their largest market, the US. The largest ISP in the US, Comcast, just put in place an extremely restrictive 1.2 TB per month data cap, for every 50 GB you go over that cap you have to pay an additional $10, or you have to pay an additional $30 a month to get unlimited data. xCloud will be using something like 8-9 GB per hour once 1080p streams are added and 14-16 GB per hour once 4K streams are added. At those data rates, you can use up your entire 1.2 TB cap with about 80 hours of playtime per month at 4K and about 140 hours at 1080p, and of course people will have other things using up data as well, including tv streaming. To get a plan fast enough for 4K xCloud streaming as well as unlimited data will now cost you $111 per month on Comcast. And many other US ISP's have caps just as restrictive and unlimited data pricing just as high as Comcast.

Game streaming simply isn't a great option for anybody who lives in a country with bad data caps. Then there are the gamers who live in rural areas that don’t have access to high speed internet at all, at least until Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet or the 1Gbit DSL over copper phone line initiatives are completed. Game streaming is at least 5 years away from becoming the primary form of gaming, until then Microsoft needs to compete with Sony on consoles, and they can’t do that without better production capability.