Late to the party but:
I really do like this format and I hope they stick with it going forward. Having player-facing materials and DM-facing materials is how settings have sort have always been, and breaking it into separate books means you don't need to give your players access to the full setting material to still let them get a good feeling for the world.
Or create your own gazetteer type thing to present to your players.
While for Dragonlance and Spelljammer or Forgotten Realms this will be less useful (Since there's decades of material on these settings) a -new- setting would absolutely gain the biggest benefit of this new format.