I'd be of the opinion they really don't have anything set in concrete that they can show or discuss yet!! If they mention possibilities and then they don't make the final game, imagine the screams we'd hear. Better to keep quiet until there is something definite to reveal!! BUT, why couldn't they just tell us that?
The techdemo, a propotype, was finished in March last year, crunch time begun in December Corwin, so they do have something to show. I honestly wouldn't mind much that they haven't until now, except I sort of remember when people found out about Deus Ex2 having single ammo and all the other design choices that were not very well received, for instance, it was too late to change anything. Since the lead designer at Fallout3 worked on DX2 I was hoping they understood the risks of not giving much input until the March interview to the official X-Box magazine and the official announcement of the game features on a gaming get together following soon after.
And just one thing, Fallout fans aren't up and arms, if we look at it closely. When the game was announced there was a pouring of people from all sides of the web that showed up at the TeS forum and signalled their thoughts. It was on their own that they showed up, and if there was lots of screaming and kicking involved it was from both sides, casual and hardcore Fallout and TeS fans.
On the case of NMA only three or four guys took part on those discussions, the only time we had to organize ourselves was when a Beth dev mocked Fallout fans in general as nerds not worth respect, and when we posted his thoughts the Something Awfull people decided to ban everyone from NMA, a few prepared DoS attacks, and later they were joined by kids from Penny arcade with loads of trolling posts and obscene pictures on the GD forum. By that time we started to talk to the Beth devs, they joined our forum and DAC (some were already at the Codex since it's an CRPG site and not a Fallout fansite, since they were following Oblivion) and everything cooled off.
Just a couple of months ago someone asked me on the Codex why we weren't in arms kicking and screaming, and I just told him that we were forced to post news on Fallout3, since it's our obligation to the fans, but no one was paying much attention to it on the NMA team except Rosh, or very interested, to be honest. Reporting was a task, nothing else, a few of the admins and mods were enforcing the policy on not making wild charges against Beth or stirring things up before we knew more, until one dev from Beth told us that they weren't going to talk to us because there was a lot of anti Oblivion posts on the Gaming forum, we found it weird since only Rosh was being militant against the game at the time but it didn't seem all that important at the time since they were posting at DAC.
They then disappeared from DAC and told the world the X-Box community was going to have the first real info on the game (besides Desslock, that didn't said much), and the tension surfaced again, with old posts from Rosh, that had resigned from NMA in protest to the fact we weren't at war with Beth
and Vault_Dweller from the Codex resurfing with the questions about real time combat and first person, the infamous "Oblivion with Guns", gaining more attention since it seemed clear the priority is the X-Box crowd.
So there's no up and arms, but there is some tension. Maybe we'll work things up, there are still a few channels open and a few of us don't dislike everyone at Bethesda, and the regular fans are still voicing their opinions but in a more wait and see stance. We'll talk more in a couple of months, I guess.