I remember when I bought my PS4...for Tomb Raider Definitive Edition. And later, I bought an Xbox One for Titanfall. I still have fond memories of TLoU being the best game on PS4.

As far back as 2005, I remember "next gen" console launches offering a slightly better versions of the previous gen. It's expected.

I am not talking about exclusives, I am talking about games in general.  Most games, including console exclusives, were cross gen (exception to Order 1886, Bloodborne, and Infamous outside of launch games).  Three exclusives over 2 year not being cross gen does not erase the majority of 3rd party games from the equation that were.  Some of them were just last gen ports such as Last of Us, God of War 3, Uncharted collection, and Tomb Raider.  But I guess last gen ports are only evil when Nintendo does it.

And how did this turn into an exclusive debate between PS4 and X1?  Everything I said applied to both brands, so to jump to the defense at something that was not even brought up is kind of funny TBH.

Hmm,

"The mind-blowing graphics?" The huge step in gaming experiences that we've been waiting for?"

Ryse certainly looked better than 360 graphics, but was it, "mind blowing?" Lets be serious, the visual leap wasn't PS1 to Dreamcast mind blowing. Ryse resembled a 7th gen game but with more polish. Crysis 3 on 360 was technically impressive, but lacked the polish of Ryse. Further more, the launch games weren't the, "huge step in gaming experiences we've been waiting for?" You obviously agree so ignored that.

You're cherry picking. Black Flag and CoD Ghosts barely looked different. Meanwhile something like Battlefield 4 showed a huge disparity. Both in performance (30 fps vs 60 fps) and visuals. I don't think its a coincidence you ignored that game. Hence, 8th and 9th gen games can make the visual and performance disparity like we saw in Battlefield 4.

Again, I hope developers focusing on cross gen games are also designing the games to take advantage of 9th gen consoles. If the 9th gen versions demonstrate better performance, better assets, better effects and reduce load times significantly, than that would still demonstrate a power disparity between 8th and 9th gen hardware.

In fact, its evident something like Gears 5 will do that from the start. The base X1 version is 30 fps with low/medium settings. The Series X version was apparently doing highest PC settings, 60 fps and 4K. I would argue that's overall bigger than what Ryse did.

Back in 2005 when 360 launched, it had the advantage of being able to handle modern PC games. Performance was bad, but it was pretty cool to see CoD 2 and Quake 4 running on console without significant compromises. It was also the first HD focused console.

More importantly, we also had the underappreciated Condemned, a game I still consider dank as fuck.

I was still playing a ton of 7th gen for the first couple years of the 8th gen. It was pretty bad.

I guess it's all perception. I thought CoD 2 looked like poop but the online was awesome. I did love Condemned, though. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter was the closest thing to "next gen" for me, at the time but I wasn't blown away until Gears of War.

*Edit* I STILL play a ton of 7th gen games and, for better or worse, a fairly large chunk of my 8th gen games are just updated versions of 7th gen games. I'm going into gen 9 with tempered expectations.

Ooo good point I completely forgot that Battlefield V doubled the framerate on PS4/XB1. That's huge and noticable. Side by side comparisons are useful, but most of those scenes if they weren't side by side you can't tell a huge difference between the 2 by playing on one system one day and another the next other than just the increased sharpness. But frame rate is huge, totally forgot about that.

I'm not a battlefield player, I only mentioned AC:BF and COD Ghosts because I actually bought those on PS4 and wasn't every impressed with how they looked. and ran compared to the PS3 version. Whereas I remember seeing Shadowfall and Ryse and thinking wow okay that's a serious improvement. 

Because XSX and PS5 uses SSD's, cross gen games will never be on the level that games designed specifically for them, not even close. Level design and game mechanics change massively. Uncharted for example has so many of the super slow, sully and nate helping each other climb over obstacles, because the system needs to load up the next part of the level. The layout of levels is so that pop in isn't too bad for asset loading, the speed of travel in open world games is limited due to the storage. 

Surely they can look decent but the entire game design changes when you know everyone playing this game will have a super fast SSD. I think that's the point most people are trying to make.

the splitscreen of GR was very fun, hard enough that the few missions took me and a few buddies multiple evening
but oblivion should get a mention here aswell, my pc died during that time so untill i had enough money to get a new one i played it on the 360

I see this sentiment, a perceived contradiction. Microsoft should bring more games. And Microsoft should have no cross gen first party stuff for too long, if ever. But I don't think it is meant in a contradicting way.
To me, it could also be understood in this way: people are salty that Microsoft had a lackluster first party line-up this gen. (I also think that way.) Now they do bring quite a bunch of games running on the current machine. But it is seen as too late. The next box is around the corner and when it is out, I would want games taking real advantage of it, rather than games just having more fps and pixels. This does not bode well for Microsofts first party. If they spend the next two years releasing games for an already 7 year old console, they will only have 5 years of making games that really feel next gen, compared to Sonys first party having 7 years.

The initial question was this: is the series x's cross gen approach robbing its potential customers from the next gen thrill? I would say yes, that is true. And I would add: and xbox did not have much of a thrill going on this gen and now it is too late to try and focus any first party efforts on current gen.

Cutting support too early is not okay. I think this is what we saw with the xbox360. But cutting too late, what we are seeing now, is also a bad approach.

I'll just say that Killzone Shadow Fall and Infamous SS wouldn't be possible on PS3 unless they made big cuts. Also Knack for all the hate and flack couldn't have the physics done on PS3.

Totally agree. If you look back now, sure you can say games like Ryse, Infamous SS and Shadowfall didn't deliver. But at the start of current gen, all eyes were on them and they played a big part in getting people excited for next gen. Of course there will be true next gen games on both platforms eventually and I'm guessing multiplatform games like BF6 will be some of the best looking games out there when they launch. But in the here and now, people are still deciding which console to buy and are craving to see what next gen is all about. MS's strategy might be very consumer friendly but its also going to be a marketing nightmare for the first couple of years.

MS already has a lot to prove going into next and a Series X exclusive Halo is just what they needed to kick off next gen with a bang. Instead they're running with their 1st party cross gen thing, while Sony be showing off their ps5 exclusives with never before seen eye-ball-melting visuals.

I'm also wondering what's the value is of smart delivery a couple of years into the the next gen console cycle. Do they expect people to still buy and play games on the Xone by then? And if so, when will they finally drop X1 support and start making exclusives that aren't shackled to a jaguar cpu and hdd? Somehow I got a feeling MS has been too busy looking at the success of games like Minecraft and Fortnite. They're so successful because they can be played on any potato pc and mobiles, but focusing on games like that is one sure way to not get people excited about next gen.