Is this really the best time to ask this question when A ) Most of the studios Microsoft have acquired have not yet released the games they've worked on since their acquisition and B ) Most of the Sony (Microsoft's main competitor) games (funded by Sony or timed-exclusive for them) which have released in the past year have received critical praise at least decently lower than people were expecting, if not outright significantly lower.

I know Metacritic = / = quality but we act like that all the time on this site and now is no reason to change, especially if we're just referring to critical reception. Days Gone, Death Stranding, MediEvil, and now (albeit to a much lesser extent) Final Fantasy 7 Remake have all received scores lower than what most people were expecting. You could even throw Shenmue 3 in there, though it is a console-exclusive, and Concrete Genie, though that's a smaller first party IP that never had much expectations from the general public, however I'll include it because those are the kind of games OP is literally referring to. Many of these are games that have had hype-cycles for years, people had to wait for them forever and when they arrived they were messy blobs. Playstation's first party studios are generally more proven, and they probably will be for quite a while, but that's just more reason for Xbox to step up to the occasion.

When you look at a list of Death Stranding, Days Gone, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Shenmue 3, Concrete Genie, MediEvil, do you honestly see a focus on quality? Or easy marketing montages for E3s of yesteryear? A more appropriate question might be, is Sony paying too much money for Japanese Timed-Exclusives?

And as for Nintendo? It might be nice to get more than one new game every 6 months, and good third party support to boot!

The good:
Ori and the blind forest - 88
Ori and the will of the wisps - 90
Gears 4 - 84
Gears 5 - 84
Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 85
Halo 5: Guardians - 84
Forza Horizon 3 - 91 (+ Hot Wheels - 87)
Forza Horizon 4 - 92
Forza Motorsport 6 - 87
Forza Motorsport 7 - 86
Quatum Break - 77
Killer Instinct - 73
Sunset Overdrive - 81

The bad (and or ugly):
Bleeding edge - 68  (has 13 viewers on twitch right now. Intrest seems really low)
Crackdown 3 - 60 (has 1 viewer on twitch.tv)
Recore - 63
State of decay 2 - 66
Sea of theives - 69
Super Lucky's Tale - 64
Zoo Tycoon: ultimate Animal collection - 70
Rush: A disney/pixar adventure - 68
Disneyland Adventures - 67
Phantom Dust - 73
Voodoo Vince: Remastered - 69
Halo Wars 2 - 79
Dead Riseing 4 - 72
Project Spark - 73

Microsoft does just as many good, as they do these smaller terrible games.
If its Forza/Gears/Halo, its likely a good game. Those guys that make "Ori" seem to make enjoyable platformers too.

Alot of these multiplayer focused games that review poorly, are just left to die a week or two after release.
State of decay 2, seems to have "stuck" around better (than crackdown 3 or Bleeding edge).

I think its a bad strategy to focus so much on these multiplayer focused games, theres too many of them, most are poor quality.
Big AAA games from multiplats, do things so much better that these games are basically just fighting a loseing battle from the start.
Its almost unavoidable, that they just end up left for dead.

Man, pretending Death Stranding, Days Gone and FF7R are quantity and not quality is really funny. If you were going to do it you would need to discount almost all MS titles as just quantity.

Actually you would need to do it for almost any developer.

Is this really the best time to ask this question when A ) Most of the studios Microsoft have acquired have not yet released the games they've worked on since their acquisition and B ) Most of the Sony (Microsoft's main competitor) games (funded by Sony or timed-exclusive for them) which have released in the past year have received critical praise at least decently lower than people were expecting, if not outright significantly lower.

I know Metacritic = / = quality but we act like that all the time on this site and now is no reason to change, especially if we're just referring to critical reception. Days Gone, Death Stranding, MediEvil, and now (albeit to a much lesser extent) Final Fantasy 7 Remake have all received scores lower than what most people were expecting. You could even throw Shenmue 3 in there, though it is a console-exclusive, and Concrete Genie, though that's a smaller first party IP that never had much expectations from the general public, however I'll include it because those are the kind of games OP is literally referring to. Many of these are games that have had hype-cycles for years, people had to wait for them forever and when they arrived they were messy blobs. Playstation's first party studios are generally more proven, and they probably will be for quite a while, but that's just more reason for Xbox to step up to the occasion.

When you look at a list of Death Stranding, Days Gone, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Shenmue 3, Concrete Genie, MediEvil, do you honestly see a focus on quality? Or easy marketing montages for E3s of yesteryear? A more appropriate question might be, is Sony paying too much money for Japanese Timed-Exclusives?

And as for Nintendo? It might be nice to get more than one new game every 6 months, and good third party support to boot!

I'm pretty sure that most X1 gamers actually stream on Mixer instead of Twitch.  So Mixer is a much better indicator on how popular any given X1 title is.

Man, pretending Death Stranding, Days Gone and FF7R are quantity and not quality is really funny. If you were going to do it you would need to discount almost all MS titles as just quantity.

Actually you would need to do it for almost any developer.

That's going by what this site constantly goes by, not my personal standards. I'm actually decently excited for FF7R, but I don't think my arguments are any more disingenuous than most arguments about Microsoft's output (of course, they have been way worse than Sony consistently, but I'm saying that in the recent term both companies haven't done the best, and that in both cases the future prospects have yet to be seen). Of course, Metacritic was never and has never been an actual symbol of quality, but let's be consistent now. And the counter-argument would be, Ori and all the recent Forza Horizons are just as quality, if not moreso, then those titles, again going by Metacritic. 

However, considering the OP is basically talking about the difference between AAA vs AA/A games, I guess it doesn't even matter. I think it's a little silly to act like Microsoft's first party releases for this year set a precedent for what the future is going to be when, again, most of their studio acquistions have yet to release games yet, and even when they do smaller games are developed faster than bigger games, so it's more coincidence that the smaller titles will release first. Again though, it's totally fair to say MS has way more to prove, than Sony, but I don't think the OP is giving a very good example. Days Gone is literally, 3 measly points, about Bleeding Edge.  

Man, pretending Death Stranding, Days Gone and FF7R are quantity and not quality is really funny. If you were going to do it you would need to discount almost all MS titles as just quantity.

Actually you would need to do it for almost any developer.

For me Days Gone is an underappreciated game, I really liked it.

But considering the time it took to develop even if someone wants to say it isn't quality (be it Metacritic or personal taste) it isn't a "just quantity", same with DS and FF7R. Guess I should have been more clear.

And also I agree with you that we are still to early to judge anything. And as long as MS output enough quality content, having some quantity that isn't of the best quality is good as well. I miss the days when A, AA and AAA had very good games. And would be great to get back at that with prices also varying in accordance with scope, budget and quality of the product as we have in basically all other markets.

Think the idea was promoting these games with a implication of 90+ metacritic score when they couldn’t reach it

Yeah to be clear I'm arguing more about the Metacritic portion of the OP's argument. The actual OP is such a tangled web of different ideas that they're all hard to respond to at once in a logical fashion, even if when written down they seem to make perfect sense, they're actually pretty hard to argue against because they are all different ideas. It's like how you can easily say what you love about your favorite movie, usually in one or two sentences, but it's hard to say what you don't like about a movie without delving into a lot of detail. To be clear, quantity over quality, legitimate quality, and system sellers are all different ideas. They aren't the same from a theoretical standpoint even if in the real world they seem to fit together. Just as an example, Minecraft would undoubtedly be a system seller if MS locked it to Xbox, and that was an indie game. All I'm really saying is that something like Days Gone is not that different from Bleeding Edge when using review aggregates. 

I can understand that. For me The Last Guardian is one of the cooler exclusives this gen and no one else seems to really agree. As I said Metacritic isn't actually representative in quality. 

And I would say we should be careful when using time to develop as a good thing. I actually think things taking longer can lead to disappointment when they don't score as high, which was part of my point. But also, there are so many things that factor into how long a game's development is. Would I say Final Fantasy 15 is more AAA or "quality" than Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Probably not. 

Yeah kinda. Also, I'm frankly glad reviewers seem to finally be using number scores more correctly (even if only slightly).