I dont think it is the meta score that makes people think these games are disappointing. There seems to be a discrepancy between the official scores and people's experiences or expectations compared to what they were waiting from these titles.
This. Review scores are no longer dependable.
Another note: I realize a few people around here hate the Xbox lineup this generation, but I think it's better than the PS lineup. None of that matters though, it's just our personal opinions. The pro reviewers in the aggregate believe that MS has more good 8.5 games than Sony, but Sony has more home run 9s than MS. Working within that reality is the only honest way to have this discussion. People should probably stop calling Halo, Starfield and Forza "disappointing". If 8.5 is disappointing to you then why isn't Spider-Man Miles Morales disappointing? Why isn't Horizon FW disappointing because it didn't score 9s from critics? It's not honest. It wasn't all doom and gloom for Sony when all they could put out was remakes and cross-gen titles for 2 years after launch. The brand was powerful enough that they couldn't do any wrong in some peoples eyes. MS owned 5 studios in 2017 and now they have 40. As AAA games take 5 years to make we're only now going to see the fruits of MS pre-gen acquisitions, not yet the 30 studios that have since been acquired. Be honest about the potential here. It's more than "meaningful" in my opinion.
Xbox fans, myself included, expected too much. 25 million units vs. 50 million PS5s isn't a terrible start given the challenges. Outside of Japan that's probably 25 million to 45 million, + making ground on PC. If 2023 sales ratio of 3:1 continues, then Sony will sell 75 million units and MS will sell another 25 million. Thus 120:50, which is on the low end of MS's predictions. Not good, but MS can probably live with it until they get the studios churning out consistently.
Good luck
I don't think that's true at all. Generations don't have to exist anymore. People around here might label 2026 as "new" and 2029 as "mid", but that's not relevant really when MS 1st party devs/publishing start churning out 6 AAA releases and 6 AA releases every year. Besides, anything 3rd parties release on Sony's 2028 console will just look as good or better on MS's 2029 machine. If devs can support 10 year old PC hardware, why not 9 year old S & X? More practically, they'll just support the last 3 most powerful machines with most releases and many other releases will also support S & M (if it comes out). In fact, if MS were to make the M play all S titles, then by default all M titles could work on the S.
Work it backwards: in 2029 ES VI, Doom Next, and Forza Next all support 2026 and 2029 hardware, but almost everything else also supports X as well (which is probably < $200 by then). S users are expected to upgrade after 9 years.
PS: There's no logic to the idea that Sony can release in 2020, 2024 and 2028 and MS can't release in 2020, 2026 and 2029. (Though I'd prefer 2020, 2025 and 2029.) With 5 year game dev cycles and cross-gen realities, a year or two isn't the critical difference it might have been before.
You realize the whole reason why MSFT entered the console business was the realization its much smarter and easier to build software to a specific configuration of hw? Thats how the Xbox came to be after Seamus Blackely convinced Bill Gates that Direct X alone wasnt going to work. This is axiomatic. Generations are always going to exist because its much much smarter to build games around specific hw, be at a certain amount of RAM, compute, or breakthrough in hw etc. Without that you'll face so many issues in terms of the compatibility, long terms support, etc. That MSFT faced in the 90s.
Another thing you seem to overlook is that devs build games to be played by millions of people. Ed Fries who was one of the heads of the OG Xbox said that one of the challenges they faced is they didn't have enough Xbox users to get their games profitable and in hindsight, they should have made some of their exclusives available on the PS2 as well. This doesn't mean they wouldnt have eventually made them exclusive, but they would have needed to do that as they built out their fan base.
With Ed Fries comments in mind, if they release a next gen console in 2026, they'll be making these games at a loss because there wont be enough consumers with the new console. If they make cross gen games, they wont be good enough to warrant users buying a new console in 2026 because most of the industry and Software tools are still meant for this current gen. In fact its this time devs will be fully utilizing the PS5 and Series X and with minimal effort the PS5 pro!!.
The issue with your analysis is you're not considering Software tools, Software development life cycles. The consoles you see today(Besides the Series S, which was a marketing driven decision) were built using software developer input since 2014!!! So even if MSFT woke up and told all their devs to start developing the next gen of software for their 2026 next gen machine they would have to be prepared to take losses on the titles in order to deliver a something different or simply create cross gen games(Keep in mind Ed Fries comments earlier on).
Now this is the other thing. Because games are more expensive and take longer to make, cross gen games being the predominant titles of a new gen make more sense these days (Unless Xbox expects to sell over 10 million machines of its next gen machine in its first year 2026/2027).
So your whole idea that Xbox is going to release a next gen console in 2026 and it will just churn out AAAs is simplistic at best. There are so many issues with such an idea because of where the industry is at the moment. A pro console would have made more sense if they didnt have 2 consoles out already.