Eh. Not really. One of the key responsibilities of a PR and Comms team is to ensure that the messaging is controlled in a way that's always advantageous to the brand. Speaking as someone who does this dumb shit for a living, I can safely say that had I been in the MS Comms team at the time the rumours started to swirl about Starfield, my first question to higher management would have been, what can I say, and how quickly can I say it.
Anyone with half a brain and worth their salt would have been able to predict where the conversation around these rumours would go, given the poor sales of Xbox and the stalling of GP. 'Starfield coming to Ps5' turning into 'XBox throwing in the towel' is quite a natural progression under these circumstances, and I don't believe for one second that nobody in XBox comms floated the possibility that people would start to think this - unless they are all brain dead guppies, which I doubt. They were either overruled by upper management, or knew that the messaging had to be kept generic for the moment, so they could get their ducks in a row about how to tell everyone the rumours are true.
I can guarantee you that the Comms team would look at that Phil Spencer tweet with no small degree of distaste and horror.
