My thoughts remain the same: The crossgen strategy makes a ton of sense if implemented on a game by game basis. There are some games that can absolutely scale but there are others that would no doubt be held back by the 7+ year old hardware (especially that CPU). It is not a one size fits all approach. Studios should evaluate if it is the right strategy for their game.
This "two years of cross-gen first party titles" narrative is just a wreck when you consider these points:
1. The quote was from November 2019 and Booty specifically said that MSFT would be making content that "played up and down" all of their consoles +PC over the next 2 years. I think reasonable people interpreted this to mean from that point on Microsoft still saw they had at least 2 years or so of "support" for their old console not necessarily that every game would be on every device. News outlets ran the whole "2 years no next gen stories".
2. Microsoft did absolutely nothing to try and clarify. They let the news run the story over and over and over. Poor PR on their part.
3. Not only did Microsoft let the news run the story but Microsoft kept talking about cross-gen which is frankly bizarre when you consider that they have only announced 4 games releasing after Series X launch that fit that criterion: Halo, Flight Sim, Gears Tactics, and Psychonauts. Tactics and Pyschonauts can 100% be scaled, Halo has more problems than just hardware right now, Flight Sim scales on PC (Its going to be rough but doable). Everything else, Forza, Fable, Avowed, etc, is Series X + PC only. That was a ton of talk for what amounts to only a small handful of games. Frankly, with Tactics being out on PC already, Flight Sim being so niche, and Psychonauts being a PS4/Xbox One title to begin with, the only game that matters for the average person is Halo...that was a ton of talk for one game. I get that they wanted to talk about current gen stuff like Ori, Grounded, Gears 5 scaling up for new hardware but thats a totally different thing.
TL;DR: Works on a case by case basis. 2 year no first party next gen was never accurate but Microsot allowed it to be repeated. Microsoft talked a ton about cross-gen and Halo is really the only true cross-gen title. Weird they spent so much time talking about it for one game.