MS is just not a good loser, if they are in 2nd place in something, they will hide the number; like their console hardware sales. 

Halo 5: Microtransactions

Sea of Thieves: Released in an unfinished state.

State of Decay 2: Released unfinished.

Gears 4 :Microtransactions

Bleeding Edge: Released in a barebones state.

Gears 5 Even MORE Microtransactions

Halo Infinite: Full on GaaS/Fortnite/Destiny style game design.

Even MS knows the Gamepass model isn't sustainable without either getting lazy, or heavily leaning into Microtransactions.

P.S. What is the state of Microtransactions in Forza?

Halo 5, Gears 4/5 are all full campaign and multiplayer modes. You don’t have to spend a penny on micros and play the same meaty games as previous entries in the series. If you want a pink Lancer or a rare Halo helmet then sure, that’s your choice. 

SoT and SoD were advertised as games as a service. Today each game has substantial content then if they were single releases. That’s just the double edge sword of GaaS: lesser short term content but superior long term content. Nobody pressuring you to play these games day 1. I myself didn’t pick up SoT until it’s anniversary update.

Bleeding Edge to a lesser degree as it was marketed as a small scale passion project. As for Forza they are among the most non instructive micros in the industry. Played Forza Horizon 4 with no incentive to purchase any DLC. 

I think the big difference you aren’t seeing is that Xbox does multiplayer. PlayStation does “one and done” games. Completely different takes on gaming experiences. And as we see above, when Sony does make a game with multiplayer like GT Sport they charge plenty with micros. Instead of focusing on your examples having micros, I prefer to look at it as: Xbox games have a full campaign and multiplayer component where as PlayStation mostly just does single player. Xbox puts in the effort to make games last. 

... like... what? For argument's sake, we'll call this a rental program. Why would that mean you can't rent a long game? I used Gamefly for a while, and I played a mix of long games and short games. I didn't feel the need to limit myself to short games, because it was cheap enough, and I didn't feel any compulsion to focus on shorter games to get more bang for my buck, cause that would be kind of weird. With Gamepass, since you don't have to return a game before you can get a new one, there's even less incentive to avoid lengthy games. As for variety, there's plenty of variety on Gamepass. Look at the list yourself.

This kind of seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Also, the use of M$ is frowned upon. A normal S will be fine.

A 10 hour campaign is meaty? Ok. 

You know what I have to do to change the color of my armor in GoT? Spend 15 of the flowers that are littered all over the game. 

GaaS isn't superior long term content. It's watered down content. They take 50 hours of gameplay and stretch it out into 300 hours, with artificial game lengtheners. Meanwhile a good single player game will offer up 20-100 hours of gameplay that respects your time. GaaS is like a single bottle of Soda watered down into twelve bottles. 

Advertising games as being bad, doesn't excuse them from being bad. 

What is a non-instructive MTX? 

You are right to speculate that Sony would have all MTX in their games if all their games were multiplayer based. It's pretty clear, that Sony would do that if their focus was on multiplayer. Thankfully it's not. 

Multiplayer takes considerably less effort and assets than single player. This particular point isn't one that you can't argue with me on (or anybody that has bothered to try their hand at making games). 

So, it's not enough that it offers variety? Does Microsoft have to come to your house and force you to play a variety of games? What point are you even trying to make?

And no, it's not fine. This is something we've discussed among the mods. So, that's going to be looked at negatively going forwards. So, just use a normal S. It's in a far more convenient location anyway.

Sorry I mean non intrusive, as in Forza never made me feel like I had to spend money. Otherwise there isn’t much to say because each brand caters to different experiences. I just don’t think it’s fair to compare having purely single player experiences to one that does both SP and MP. Of course because one just focuses on SP the efforts show all the more, just so you clear where I stand on it. The quality isn’t lost on me. 

Any game can do a multiplayer component but great ones last years. Take SoT, which is having its best year in 2020. It was mocked in 2018 compared to gems like GOW and Spiderman. Yet in 2020 those games only serve a purpose to be bragged about on the internet where as SoT has outlasted them all due to an addicting multiplayer loop coupled with substantial content updates. 

Just saying you may not prefer multiplayer components but you can’t deny their appeal either. Totally different approaches to games that aren’t completely comparable to each other. So calling out micros in Xbox games is one thing, but you also should acknowledge that at least they have a multiplayer. 

A 10 hour campaign is meaty? Ok. 

You know what I have to do to change the color of my armor in GoT? Spend 15 of the flowers that are littered all over the game. 

GaaS isn't superior long term content. It's watered down content. They take 50 hours of gameplay and stretch it out into 300 hours, with artificial game lengtheners. Meanwhile a good single player game will offer up 20-100 hours of gameplay that respects your time. GaaS is like a single bottle of Soda watered down into twelve bottles. 

Advertising games as being bad, doesn't excuse them from being bad. 

What is a non-instructive MTX? 

You are right to speculate that Sony would have all MTX in their games if all their games were multiplayer based. It's pretty clear, that Sony would do that if their focus was on multiplayer. Thankfully it's not. 

Multiplayer takes considerably less effort and assets than single player. This particular point isn't one that you can't argue with me on (or anybody that has bothered to try their hand at making games).