[latch]

I know this is a damned if you do, damned if you don't attitude, but I think this is bad news for Microsoft.

Microsoft lives in an echo chamber. The last thing they need is a product people say is good, but that doesn't sell. This is going to stall them and they are going to wait for the sales to catch up to the hype - which in their mind it absolutely must/will. And when it doesn't, rather than acknowledge just how bad their brand is or how late to market they continue to be, they'll look at the outside world for what went wrong (it couldn't be them, people loved their products!).