Thats a valid point. Kratos was first introduced and was basically anger incarnate, no depth at all. So you two would be surprised at the evolution that GOW 2018 made on kratos. Hes an actual relatable character now and has some depth. The best part is how they managed to change him without destroying his history.

I remember last gen people would ask me why the heck I would choose a 360 over a PS3 when Sony had Uncharted, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Killzone 2, MGS4.

My answer? I honestly liked Halo 3/4/Reach, Gears 1-3, and other 360 console exclusives like Witcher 2, Alan Wake, and Splinter Cell Conviction better than Sony's exclusives. That might not have been a popular opinion on gaming forums, but to me 360 was just flat out the superior system.

Granted, they dropped the ball big time with the Xbone, but if they can learn from their mistakes and get some of that 7th gen gusto back, I might be willing to give them a second chance.

I'll say this much though; the July event better not be just a bunch of cinematic trailers. I wanna see gameplay.

I felt this way up until around 2010.

Fable, Halo, Mass Effect (momentarily) made me more satisfied with 360 up until a  point. I used the end of the generation to catch up with playstation exclusives like Ni No Kuni /Uncharted/TLOU and sony just kept the momentum going whereas MS dropped the ball.

ill bite
i quit tlou after 10 minutes, Gow I wont even touch dont like that kind of gameplay since heavenly sword with QTEs
IMo HZD was the only good one

so ye PS offered me one game for my taste

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.

Backwards Compatibility

Definite edge for Xbox here. They have a lead of several years here. Not only will every XB1 game be available on BC, but also all OG Xbox and 360 games that were made BC last gen. And after XSX is out, BC team says they will go back to adding more OG Xbox and 360 games. Also MS offers BC enhancements on many BC games. I can for instance go back and play Witcher 2 on 360 at 4K 30 FPS with improved textures and other improvements over the original 360 release. Easy win for Xbox here.

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. Even price is unlikely to change my mind at this point though.

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.

Same, same. Seriously, I absolutely HATED the first three games, but God of War 2018 might be one of the best games of all time due in no small part to how thoroughly they address his prior behaviour and atone for it. It's a genuinely great game I recommend everyone and everyone picks up. Honestly, it's a nearly-flawless game, in my eye. 

The beauty about Ms going after Sony is that they can gauge what people thought and what Sony showed and try to top that. 

The beauty about SONY going after MS is that they can gauge what people thought and what MS showed, and try to top that.

How am I supposed to react to that when you haven't even tried those games? Look, I get it. We all have different tastes. I got a Switch and wouldn't touch any Mario game either. Doesn't mean I don't get why its such a critically acclaimed and popular franchise, its just not my thing. If you look at the top 10 best selling ps4 games, 5 of them are exclusives and they're all different ip's. We can argue how you think those games didn't deserve the commercial and critical acclaimed success they did, but those are exactly the kind of games Series X needs to show on July. Iconic exclusives that set the Xbox brand apart and give it its own identity.

Nintendo has them, sony has them and MS used to have them with Halo and Gears. The problem for MS is that they clung on to the same 3 franchises for way too long and people lost interest in them. It happens all the time, look at Uncharted 4 or God of War Ascension, they were still great games, but there's a reason why they did the reboot with GOW and why we didn't get a Uncharted 5. People want new AAA ip's, especially when a new console generation starts. Sony gets that and they're constantly making new ones and taking risks. MS is simply terrible at doing the same thing or doesn't even try. This is why they've been so damn predictable for 2 entire console generations and why I can predict exactly what they'll show in July.  

Fixed that for you. MS show was a real show, I know you would love to brush it off but that doesn't change much for the rest of us who are not out there to spin the truth. MS has to make another show AGAIN because SONY just stole all the spotlight, just look at all those Youtube views count, MS needs to do something. But the beauty of it is that SONY will gauge what people thought and what MS is gonna show in round 2 and try top that.

I love how some of you have this unshakable belief that MS has more games in store to show us yet refuse to give SONY the benefit of the doubt that SONY just might be in a similar position. 

In any case I think all of you are overestimating what these exclusives mean for both consoles, neither of them is Nintendo, so 3rd party games will always be king. The reality is the battle comes down to who will offer the cheaper hardware, an area where MS has an edge.