I just find it hard to believe that anyone, who sees games like TLOU 2, GOW, HZD etc. getting 96 Metacritic scores, wouldn't feel any desire to play them.

 Therefore, I just find it hard to believe that anyone, who sees games like TLOU 2, GOW, HZD etc. getting 96 Metacritic scores, wouldn't feel any desire to play them.

Metacritic means basically nothing to me. I've thoroughly enjoyed games that scored in the 60s and hated games that scored in the 90s.

I didn't care for TLOU1 so I have no desire to play the sequel, and I've never liked GOW due to Kratos being my most disliked video game character of all time.

Horizon on the other hand looked pretty cool, and I'd totally play it if it was on a system I owned.

Just saying, critical reception doesn't necessarily have anything to do with an individual's personal tastes.

Metacritic means basically nothing to me. I've thoroughly enjoyed games that scored in the 60s and hated games that scored in the 90s.

I didn't care for TLOU1 so I have no desire to play the sequel, and I've never liked GOW due to Kratos being my most disliked video game character of all time.

Horizon on the other hand looked pretty cool, and I'd totally play it if it was on a system I owned.

Just saying, critical reception doesn't necessarily have anything to do with an individual's personal tastes.

I'd find it hard to believe that God of War 2018 or Horizon Zero Dawn got 96 on Metacritic. 

I explained myself enough. You skeptical that’s not on me. I think it’s a safe bet to say that Xbox plans to cover more genres then PS. And that will attract crowds that like said genres. MS clearly trying to capture the 3rd person narrative crowd that can’t get enough of PS4 exclusives, so let’s see how that goes. 

Bleeding Edge is a small game, where as Hellblade came out a few years ago. I didn’t mention Mojang or Coalition, but Playgrounds 2nd studio was what I was referring to. Again, Grounded is a small team, the bulk of Obsidian is working on a unannounced AAA game while the rest is working on Outer Worlds DLC. 343 will finally release a Halo game after 5 years and did a damn fine job keeping a closed lid this whole time and I can’t wait for it to pay off. So ya, I stand by my point that studios have been quiet for too long. 

If the small scale titles were all that those studios were working on I’d agree, but we both know that’s not the case. I mean they literally said they set aside 10-20 people for these smaller titles. 

Thank you! for the life of me, I have never been able to understand people's fascination with Kratos. I just can't stand the guy, and that's the reason why I couldn't even finish the first game.

As for the TLoU, I actually liked the game but hated the ending, so I really don't think I will ever play Part 2.

In the end things like this always come down to personal taste. Take me for example. I am a multiplat gamer who owns a Switch, a PS4 Pro, and an Xbox One. When trying to decide rather to buy Xbox Series X or PS5 first, there are many factors I took into consideration:

Games
The most important consideration for sure. Microsoft hasn’t even done their July show yet, and yet there are already many games they have announced that interest me. Halo Infinite, Everwild, Flight Simulator, Project Mara, Call of the Sea, Second Extinction, The Medium. Add those to heavily rumored early gen games like Forza Motorsport 8, Forza Horizon 5, Fable Reboot, and Perfect Dark reboot, and there is quite a lot to interest me of XSX in the early years of the generation. By comparison, Sony wise I am interested in Horizon 2, Deathloop, Tokyo Ghostwire, and Kena, but 2 of those are timed exclusives that I can eventually play on Xbox, while Kena is cross-gen, I can play it on PS4. As for other likely early gen PS5 games, God of War 5 has my interest and Spider-Man 2 might if they go back to Peter, but that is about it. Not very hyped for Naughty Dog’s future since they dropped Uncharted in favor of the rather meh TLOU. Never liked GT or LBP. Sucker Punch won’t have a PS5 game until mid-late gen since they chose to release Ghost of Tsushima so late this gen. Sony just doesn’t have as many early gen games to look forward to for me.

Design
I like simple designs, nothing too flashy. XSX is simple, PS5 is the very definition of flashy. PS5 is also far too big. Noise matters to me a lot as well, and Digital Foundry claims XSX is whisper quiet.

Services
While PS+ has been superior to XBL Gold recently in terms of free games, Gamepass so far is far superior to PS Now, thanks to day one 1st/2nd party games on Gamepass, as well as some 3rd party games available day one.

Controller
The edge goes to Sony on this one, I like that XSX has replaceable batteries, and I love XB1/XSX controller ergonomics. But MS played it too safe here, the controller is 90% the same as XB1. Sony on the other hand is offering innovations like improved haptics feedback and resistance triggers.

In the end, XSX comes out on top by a pretty fair margin. And that is before the July show, which is sure to have many good surprises that will sway me even further towards buying XSX first. At this point the only thing that might sway me to get PS5 first is XSX being $100 or more above PS5, but I find that unlikely given the expensive custom SSD and controller innovations increasing costs on PS5.