Rule of thumb: generally around these parts (thanks to past precedent), when referring to Phil Spencer this is almost
never used in good connotation. It's also very disingenuous. He actually has done technical-related work too. This isn't hard to find out.
From Wikipedia:
"Spencer joined Microsoft in 1988 as an intern and has worked in a number of technical roles, leading the development of Microsoft's first CD-ROM-based titles (such as Encarta), development manager for Microsoft Money, and general manager of Microsoft's online and offline consumer productivity products including Microsoft Works and Microsoft Picture It! [4][5] "
Also you guys realize Mark Cerny was also effectively serving as a marketing person during Road to PS5, right? Even if he was discussing technical aspects of the system, he very selectively ignored highlighting any weaknesses or negatives to hardware design decisions they made.
The act of only selling you the good aspects of something and downplaying/omitting the downsides...is basically marketing.
Try actually being specific. I'm certain if you were, we could tell how many of those "things" are genuine and how many are just fanciful conjecture.
This reads like a fanboy comment and ignores the fact that people by and large are WAY more interested in Series X than they were for Xbox One during this relative time frame period. Not just the Xbox community but also a large amount of the PlayStation and Nintendo communities as, gasp!, many of them are multi-platform owners and play on more than one device.
You're absolutely reaching to try implying this as a negative. At least MS got a chance to actually reveal their system at a live gaming show. That'll probably be the last time it happens until the midgen refreshes. And FWIW the reception to that reveal is unanimously positive and impressive to say the least. Hardly recall a single account of people thinking it was a "bad" thing to do...you might just be the first.
This was a comment mentioned by Matt Booty during... E3 2019. Meaning the two-year period covers up to holiday 2021, or the 1st year of next-gen.
'Ya know, the same period that's usually always filled with cross-gen games anyway, and where 1st party hardly ever does anything that can be considered a genuine game design paradigm shift (i.e just last-gen games with much prettier graphics and usually using some of the new hardware features as gimmicks).
And this is bad how? You realize Sony is starting to shift to a similar model too, right? And bringing more of their games to PC at that. I swear there's this very interesting response from some people where if Sony announces or basically reveals they're doing the EXACT same thing Microsoft does, suddenly that thing is good for the industry and is showered with praise.
It reeks of strong bias favoritism and comes off like partisan politics.
Oh so now next-gen just being prettier games is a good thing again? Again this is funny, because ever since Sony did the Road to PS5 presentation one thing I've observed is people hyping up how much SSDs will change game design, and yet (somewhat stupidly) enough every single example they bring up basically boils down to "prettier graphics".
Now that isn't me saying the SSDs won't have an impact on future game design, but at least try arguing for benefits that don't essentially mean "better graphics", which is what 90% of people who argue for benefit of SSDs to next-gen (usually from the perspective of Sony's SSD I/O) routinely do. But here, you are creating another "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position for MS because just a few paragraphs earlier you went on about how much of a "marketing guy" (as a deregotive) Phil Spencer supposedly is. Yet here in the quote you grab, he's being rather non-"marketing guy" like and honest about the aspect of visual diminishing returns...but oh no. NOW he's killing hype for next-gen because he isn't trying to sell you a pitch strong enough even if that'd mean embellishing on a few things.
Next thing you know he does exactly what you said he should've done and you'd probably just find another thing to criticize him on. Like RT for example; never mind they have already
shown the stuff you said he should've mentioned here (regardless if they're in-engine or not Hellblade 2 and Project: Mara still have the best facial animations/details and RT of any next-gen demonstration so far, between both consoles), I'm sure if he just went on talking about ray-tracing again the probability's very high you'd just focus on him mentioning prettier graphics again because "he'd know" them "
using Series S as the base cuts back the gameplay design scope on Series X so it's just a resolution box" (placed those in quotes because that's your prevailing theory and not something I'd come within ten feet of touching as my own xD).
I love how you ignore
all the other marketing they've done which has gone over fantastically to cherry-pick this single non-issue of a quote from Spencer to attempt painting their entire next-gen marketing as ineffective.
I truly fear for your mental sanity after July 23rd destroys all of these points of concern for you. More curious if you'll just accept being wrong or if a new goalpost gets set up.
Exciting times ahead!