I wonder, though, to what extent Sony (relatively) bringing forward next gen development effort will inform and assist development on those 2021/2022/2023 games. A bit of this is more about company structure, but I wonder about the extent to which the ICE team, for example, supporting launch releases for PS5 will help ND on their later PS5 games. I wonder how the shared experience on launch games helps the wave 2+ games. I think there may potentially be benefits beyond your year one games, to switching more of your studios' focus, earlier. Maybe those year one games won't be AMAZING groundbreakers for the new gen, but if that's because it's actually tough to figure out ways to leverage this new tech for obvious/'wow' improvements, I think getting your first iteration, your 'launch games' done in 2020 is better than doing it in 2021 or 2022, and delaying the iteration that will hopefully see sophisticated ideas emerge. If this headstart doesn't matter because the transition will be so easy, and new ways to wow people with the tech come fast and easily, then it actually only raises the risk of appreciable differences showing up in the earlier games.
That's aside from the signal it sends for marketing. 'We know you're paying $500 now for a new generation, and we're kickstarting that new cycle of development now.' vs 'We know you're paying $500 now, and we'll get to a new generation of games in a couple of years'. One plays to existing expectations of a new generation, one potentially confuses or confounds those expectations. I'm more interested in the impact on development, but I think the marketing challenge might be a bigger thing MS should be careful of. That kind of challenge, around not sufficiently separating a new console from what people already have, has caused problems for platform holders before. Maybe MS doesn't care because they just want you subscribing to Gamepass, but the assumption that the relationship between game consumption and hardware has disappeared might prove a bit premature/risky.
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