You said all that... But you still haven't explained the One Year cutoff point.
And the whole "it would all be sold out at launch anyway" had always being a dangerous line of thinking. Because this time around, Xbox is literally cutting the legs off Scarlet's launch in every way possible. And we have had consoles that were not sold out at launch, and it wasn't that many gens ago. Those consoles are just no longer around, because once you have a truly failed launch your console is just dead.
You really think Scarlet can sell itself and it doesn't need support? Or you are just saying that because Xbox is not offering any support?
The one year delay is still impossible as a deliberate decision. At least i am assuming Xbox is not run by morons. Keep in mind that I am actually having more faith in the Xbox Studio's decision making than you do. I am actually claiming Xbox is salvaging an unavoidable bad situation, while you are saying Xbox is harming Scarlet's launch deliberately.
I don’t have a good explanation for a firm one year cutoff. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see cross gen games beyond that and think it could just be PR speak as there’s been some backlash from gamers who want next gen exclusives to justify their future purchase, who worry about cross gen holding games back well into next gen etc.
I don’t think they’re deliberately trying to sabotage sales of Series X. I think they just know that they got killed by Sony with the PS2 and with the PS4, and finished neck and neck last gen when Sony fucked up all the momentum they had with the bad PS3 launch price, tough to develop for cell processor etc.
They know Sony has all the momentum again with how much the PS4 has sold and is unlikely to botch the PS5 launch in a major way and that means it’s a tough road to hoe for the Series X to sell much more than the Xbox One.
Hence Spencer’s prior comments about the number of consoles sold not being their main metric anymore. They care about number of users across platforms and services. You’ll hear them touting the total number of active users in Halo Infinite across Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PC, console Gamepass, PC Gamepass and Xcloud (when it’s out) way more than Series X consoles sold unless it’s a surprise hit they vastly exceeds their expectations.
That’s what they’re going for. Not launching Halo Infinite and other cross gen would severely hurt the monthly average user numbers they crave, limit the market for DLC and MTs etc.
As for launch hardware selling out, I think that’s still a given. It was very hard to find Xbox Ones and especially PS4s for a couple months after launch and they both had godawful launch games. A cross gen Halo Infinite is much more of a system seller than shit like Ryae, Knack, Killzone Shadowfall etc. So I don’t think lacking a true exclusive will hurt much, especially if it ends up being a great game and they can market it showing how much better it looks and runs on Series X.