All you're interested in is ranting from your perspective and dismissing every argument to present an objective, reasoned argument. If you don't like Metacritic, fine, but come up with a measure you do like and use that to compare and contrast XB over the years, and Sony over the years to get a baseline. Until someone does the leg-work, this thread is just subjective ranting.
What measure are you going to use to determine how well MS (and Sony) are doing and have been doing the past three generations? What evidence can you point to to show games are getting worse? Pick a metric besides your own feelings and present the evidence that illustrates your objective point.
Without that actual reference point that can be graphed or tabulated and show a visual decline, this thread serves no use and will be closed.
Unfortunately, reviews are no longer something a person can trust. They do not analyze a game for its playability, graphics, story quality, and other objective items, but by personal opinion and taste. And sometimes, console preference!
I ask... can a person that doesn't like RTS review an RTS game? And the answer is yes, it can. But it must be professional and remain objective on what it is reviewing, and not just kill the game's note because he doesn't like it.
And why can't a person judge the quality of a game like Tlou II without being affected by its sexual choices, or the fact that the story follows a plot that isn't the one they would like it to be? Does that make the Story bad?
Why then can´t some professional websites review games without beeing influenced by the console the game is meant to?
User reviews are also not a good measurement. For starters, people will most likely spend time reviewing a game they did not like, than a game they did like. And passion makes people rate games regularly with 10 or 100%, a grade it should only happen on rare cases happen since that would mean a perfect game. And no game, no matter what, it's perfect, although some do deserve that grade because they simply are way above the average even when compared with other great games. Same goes with haters, and their Zero's.
What may then be a good metric? I know this may sound a bit stupid... but we need to go to the basics. And they are games sales... and above all... console sales!
In my opinion, currently, the only way to really see what a product is really worth is by looking at global market acceptance.
Even player engagement may be fake. Just look at Starfield in the first month, and how the game is now. When a game is offered on a service, player engagement may be faked due to people wanting to try it out. So player engagement may be a good metric, but only if sustained for a long period.
In that regard, sales are the best metric to judge a product's success... Not only because sales do dictate a product's success or failure, but also because it shows how the market is reacting to the product.
In that regard, the current Xbox situation is grim, to say the least.
A 93% PS5 market share in France, a 25:1 volume sales in Spain in PS5's favor, an over 300% sales increase in PS5 sales in Germany vs 30% decrease of Xbox, a 108k PS5 sold in Japan vs 2k Xbox, a 52% drop on Xbox sales YoY globally in Europe, and now, a market share drop in US, and an apparent 25:1 sales in PS5 favor in Brazil on the Brasilian Amazon's Black Friday, shows Xbox is losing it.
from a disgruntled former Xbox fan. It's pathetic. If the average joe could afford a 4090 PC and afford to buy and sell his XSX over and over again then I'm sure he wouldn't see the point in getting the console and yet 25 million people do and most of them have GamePass.
