Microsoft’s decision to go ahead with its GDC keynote this week, at which it began the dance-of-the-seven-veils process of lifting the wraps on its next-generation console hardware, was somewhat surprising. When the leadership of the Xbox division was reshuffled a few weeks ago, there was an implication that this would signal strategic changes as well, especially around the positioning and role of the Xbox console in the wider gaming strategy – changes which are unlikely to have even been finalised yet, much less reflected in the GDC presentation.
