*nod* damned if they do, damned if they don't.
I'm speculating, but I seriously doubt we'll get any hard info this year, and anything they do tease had better be beyond the point where it's in any doubt of shipping.
It's all about
managing expectations, though.
Do that successfully and you'll retain people's interest and support while, at the same time, avoid over-promising or creating false expectations.
The whole "team of a hundred people" thing was a textbook example of doing this wrong.
Throughout the development of Beyond there was (in optimistic quarters) a feeling that Beyond was being created by a small group while the majority of the team were obviously working on The Next Big Thing.
Which, to be fair, was fairly plausible because it's not like Beyond could
really be all a "team of 100 people" could come up with, right?
So, what happened?
Turns out that Beyond
was all the "team of a hundred people" have been working on in any meaningful way.
That's
not a good result, whichever way you try to spin it.
It would seem to suggest that Beyond (along with ongoing bug-fixes)
is all the "team of a hundred people" are capable of producing in 18 months
or somebody was telling fibs about the "team of a hundred people".
Honestly, I struggle to believe that there's
anybody left in the ED community who pays much attention when somebody from FDev announces "something exciting, coming soon".
Hell, the phrase has become a trope within the community.
Their current PR strategy has pretty-much tanked completely, to the point where the response to it ranges from outright hostility at worst to indifference at best.
Quite simply, nobody
cares (either way) what they
say any more.
If they want to change that, it's probably time to try something different.