An Xbox mid-gen refresh in 2022? Wouldn't count on it x3. That aside, when I heard Phil say those words I always took it with a grain of salt because something told me reaction from some gamers and the media especially would get them to reverse course. I think he said it shortly after their May event, or between that and the UE5 demo, or shortly after UE5 demo.
The perception formed from the optics of that was always going to be negatively interpreted even if it made some since financially, and obviously Sony thought it made sense too since they've adopted a similar strategy for some of their games. In fact in terms of 1P Sony has more cross-gen for this year and next than Microsoft does. In MS's case the optics got messy because people were still fretting over the Series S and it holding next-gen back (some still fret about it actually, even if it's needlessly so).
Personally I always thought making 100% of the 1P output cross-gen for two years was overkill, but the way the media and a lot of gamers reacted you'd think they hated the idea of ANY cross-gen support. So color me not shocked that when Sony tried downplaying (via lack of emphasis) that they were doing a good number of cross-gen titles themselves, where were the same media and gamers who chastised Microsoft earlier? You couldn't find them, they just pretended it was never a talking point they held xD. Pretty convenient.
It basically took until seeing Sony were doing cross-gen support for those sorts to accept the idea that last-gen hardware wasn't going to hold those games back, but they did their damndest to hold onto that belief when it came to Xbox. Admittedly, the Halo Infinite demo did Microsoft zero favors, but it's like these dudes forgot that we've had cases of cross-gen generations past where the last gen didn't hold the next-gen offerings back. I don't remember Forza Horizon 2 on XBO being held back by Horizon 2 on 360, or the then-next gen COD for PS4 and XBO being held back by the PS3 & 360 versions.
Sorry, little side rant there, I had to get it off my chest. I wouldn't be too fussed with MS scaling back on their cross-gen support, personally. You should see if you can do the All-Access upgrade program if you're interested in something like Series X, seems like it's a good option for those who want to use it. 1P-wise there isn't too much coming from MS you can't already play on PC like FS 2020, but the Xbox version might have some newer content. You're probably better off waiting until supply is more regular anyway, I can't understand how some people are able to camp online for drops the way they do
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