When I first heard the announcement yesterday, I thought it was clickbait. No direct quotes from Hasbro were included in the article I read, and both they and the filmmakers had repeatedly said around the time of the movie's release that it was just a prequel, and noted its multiple ties to the Michael Bay movies (known in the TF community as "Bayformers").
Now, TFW2005 (a Transformers fan site) has an official quote, with Hasbro saying that
Bumblebee is the start of "a new storytelling universe."
https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/02/16..._IAL06pknvxa7ETcV2AH3ujhbKsMpa6DCWa6S9AciOr5c
It's not a very long quote, and I don't know how reliable TFW2005 is. But the quote is out there everywhere now, and everyone is talking about it. If Hasbro wants to refute it, they'll have to do so quickly. But it does sound to me like they finally accepted it.
I haven't seen
Bumblebee yet, but it sounds great. It's the first TF movie to get a good rating at all on Rotten Tomatoes, and the ratings are off-the-charts good besides (93%. The next highest is only 57%!). So it sounds like a fresh start is for the best.