Thanks, I took some time to make it, but still I uploaded the video from another source.

I think that Microsoft is going in a direction that always matched its pedigree, which is to be as accessible as possible, be it from the ease of development, the ease of porting, the ease of connecting between players, to now the new ease of playing (Gamepass, XCloud, cross-play, All-access, backwards compatibility and PC ports). I believe that their approach to doing all of these at the same time and not one or the other is what is their strength right now. I think it's a culmination of the lessons they learned from all their mistakes in the past, and I see that they're well positioned for the next gen, be it in game distribution, increase in exclusive software, the increased variety of the games on offer and hardware capabilities of the latest console.

So yes the games should do the talking, but MS is increasing the discussion - between the players and the games - as more games can be played by more players.

I feel MS is spreading themselves too thin by wanting to be everywhere. They don't have a great track record providing software throughout any generation and seem more interested getting more people into their eco system. Offering more choice is a doubled edged sword. I like simplicity, get the best tailor made software for the next 7 years on an easy to use box.

Yep, MS is positioning themselves to be everywhere, most powerful console, likely cheapest alternative, everything cross-gen for the first 2 years, lot of effort into BC, putting everything on PC as well, Gamepass, xCloud, Games with gold, GAAS. They want to be first party, second and third all at the same time. (Yet ignore VR) What you think of as a strength, is what has me concerned. MS seems to lack focus and feels indecisive to me. Nintendo is doing amazing with their razor sharp focus, MS is spinning too many plates imo. Yet MS is a huge company, perhaps they can pull it off. If not by delivering great games, they're still a great place for 3rd party games.

how does anything you mention has effect on the output of the studios themselves?

They have to design games that run on all of the above instead of maximizing the capabilities of the Series X.

yes doing that is obviously going to take them months/years, just like every PC game is setup for the RTX4080 cant be played on a radeon4800HD because of scaling and turning on and off features

That same attitude could be applied to fans waiting for Final Fantasy 7, TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima, etc.

Same old arguments as always, yet Sony and Nintendo show what can be achieved while focusing on one hardware spec. Scaling is great, tailor made is better. That's just my opinion.

They have to design games that run on all of the above instead of maximizing the capabilities of the Series X.

where would you put Alyx?

How do you know these cross gen games aren’t being built for Series X and then scaled down to run on Series S, XB1 X, XB1 S, and XB1? Their cross-gen games this generation like Forza Horizon 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Titanfall were all built for XB1 and then scaled down for 360 by porting studios afterall. 

I see far too many people assuming that the cross-gen focus is going to hold them back because of upscaling from XB1 instead of downscaling from XSX. MS straight up said recently that Halo Infinite was built to take full advantage of XSX, we’ve known for years that 343’s new Slipspace engine was specifically built for next gen development. Rumors suggest Forza Motorsport 8 is a reboot running on a new next-gen focused built of the ForzaTech engine. We’ve already seen Hellblade 2 and it looks properly next-gen. Maybe some of the smaller A and AA games will be built for upscaling rather than downscaling, but it seems like the opposite will happen for the bigger games. Plus cross-gen focus only seems to be for 2020 and 2021 games, by Q1 2022 everything should be next gen only.

About 3 years late.

They are being build with the limiting factor that they have to be scaled down to run on Series S, XB1 X, XB1 X, XB1, and low end PC hardware. The very fact they can't rely on an SSD already limits design choices.

Even after the cross-gen period, the games still need to be able to run on PC from HDD with different controllers and also be possible to run on the low end Lockhart.