And a lot of those games have been past their best for a long time, others like Prey were decent attempts at their genre but nothing special. And you listed shooting games and Forza, not me, so your hyperbole comment is nonsense.
I was meaning, even if just for hyperbole or (probably a better way of putting it) playing's devils advocate, saying that it was shooters + forza is unfair. Yes I'd listed a few shooters but I was just saying that Bethesda brought a decent roster of games with recent success / quality. The wider offering though is clearly much more than shooters + cod.
Regard being past their best. First - not sure I agree - some, yes, but many, no. Doom, Wasteland, Wolfenstein, Flight Sim have been heralded by many critics as being great reboots getting back towards their best. Horizon is coming off it's best game, and the likes of Hellblade, Outer Worlds, Gears Tactics, Sea of Thieves are recent successful new IPs.
Secondly, I'm not sure it matters if they are past their best anyway. My point was always that there are clearly many studios on the MS roster capable of high quality games now. All the games that I listed outside the new upcoming IPs have had recent highly regarded titles. Whether they are as amazing as they once were doesn't change that.
You could say the same for Sony. God of War was 'past it's best' before the most recent addition and look how that turned out? Uncharted is definitely past it's best. So what? The studios themselves have shown to be capable of building quality games so people trust them to continue delivering to those expectations. Which is fair - I am saying the same should apply here.
Besides, you don't even know yet how many of those games are going to be genuine exclusives and even if so, it's a lot of sequels to games that have been out for out for years. It still doesn't match the clearly move varied and at times innovative games from the Sony studios.
Maybe they won't be exclusives. They'll be on Gamepass day 1 which is enough for me to justify the console purchase. But I think they likely will be.
I never claimed they would be better than Sony or that the quality yet matches it. What I said was that the quantity is coming, and there's lots of indications and signals to suggest some quality output too.
I'm not even entirely disagreeing with you, you seem to be reading more into it from your bias than you like to think. But my point very much stands, it's all same old and talk. If you want to keep comparing and fanboy fighting between Ms and Sony, then you need to see the point that it's still the same kind of lineup you'd expect. Yeah great, don't rely on Halo and Gears... but let's talk fable, Forza, State of decay...
Okay, let's talk em..? Fable - let's see. Playground are great with Horizon but let's see if they can do Fable. Open world and British humour I'm confident in, and there's a lot of RPG/progression elements in Horizon. I'm not convinced yet but really excited to see. Forza - sim racers aren't really my thing - they're well considered and highly regarded still though, even if not by the enthusiasts like yourself who know better.
State of Decay 2 was really good though. Looking forward to 3.
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