They did a pretty poor job of managing the press around it though. The closest thing we ever got to a definitive statement was when they announced Windows 11.

I agree, they did a poor job at countering the statement and I don't think they countered the statement at all.

None the less, it was never a Microsoft official statement.

When he said that, he was a Microsoft employee working on Windows being paid to speak at a Microsoft sponsored event. That's about as official as one can get outside of a board meeting. The statement was well publicized, so almost everyone knew about it. Microsoft had several years and numerous opportunities to correct the record on the matter, but they didn't, so the statement is assumed to be true.

He said it as an aside when giving a talk about developing live tiles. Not exactly some big announcement.

Even so, does it matter? Do you think the fictional "Windows 10 Forever" edition wouldn't eventually incorporate required features that didn't function on some class of hardware?