This is far from an Xbox issue. Gaming has become boring and commercialized. I grew up with the Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum, NES, SNES and Genesis. There were a lot of weird, goofy, unique games that took major risks. Games that were obvious attempts to just earn cash were largely ridiculed (I’m thinking of you, M.C. Kids).
Much like music, film, books and all other media, gaming has largely lost its attraction.
Steam is still great because it allows small developers to try new things. From what I’ve read, trying to bring such games to consoles is almost impossible.
As for Xbox, specifically: they have sanitized a lot of the online interactions, trying to make everything family-friendly. Half of the fun of Call of Duty is hearing other players lose their shit. The shit-talking makes it fun. They keep trying to remove it and have made the game a glorified Fortnite.
We have to go back.
Much like Hollywood.
Combine on the trend mentality and rent seeking (live service shooters?) and it sucks.
I really liked the PS1 and 2 eras.
PS1 was cheap to develop for relative to cartridges, and Sony just wanted games. They published so many cool and experimental things. Even brought over stuff like that from Japan.
PS2 moved away from that some but we still got fun stuff. No one would ever publish Guitaroo Man today.
Once you hit the HD era budgets started skyrocketing, team size, and it never got better.
I agree indie is where much of the fun is. Some big games are still great. But so much cool stuff is in the indie scene.
They could be publishing that. Not every PS5 game needs to look jaw dropping.
MS helped the rise of indies big time with XBLA. Don’t know why they threw that away. But their business plan hasn’t made sense since the 360 era.