The majority of gamers aren't playing halo/gears/forza though...

Sadly, the majority is playing CoD and Fortnite. I enjoyed all three, but not anymore. Maybe Halo Infinite can bring the magic back, Gears was awesome but should really have been replaced by something new by now. Forza is only good as horizon nowadays.

I would love to see PGR make a comeback, Rallisport Challenge, Fable (go back to its roots), Alan Wake, Dead Rising (back to its roots), Viva Pinata, Blinx the the sweeper. But most of all, see MS make a commitment to VR and Bring HL: Alyx to Series X.

Well, most great Microsoft made games are those you play together with friends and I prefer it that way instead of feeling like dying alone. But to each their own.

Improved framerates and loading times are a game changer though. 

Considering how they generalized all these franchises and not specific games makes me believe they are talking about those franchises, which is why I said it's not true.

I don't think you will find many people including myself who consider Halo 5 to be up there with the other great Halo games, but I still enjoyed the multiplayer a lot. MCC is also one of the greatest collection of games to release. 343 has done a fantastic job supporting it since it's revitalization in 2018. I think gamers are just as excited for Halo Infinite than any of the great Nintendo and Sony games coming out. 

As far as Gears goes, I still love that franchise. I play Gears 5 weekly, and I'm excited for the next iteration. Hopefully after Gears 6 they move on to something new. 

Forza Horizon 2/3/4 were some of the best games released last gen, and with Horizon 5 rumored to release this year, there will be a lot of hype around it. 

With how saturated the market is now, they aren't reach the same numbers like they were during the 360 days with Halo and Gears, except I would say FH4 is more popular than any Forza game before, but all these franchises are still in the top played every week on Xbox and still see high engagement.  

Forza is Horizon at this point, which is not a bad thing at all and good for the franchise imo. I hope Halo Infinite single player is excellent. With Halo's multiplayer being F2P I have a hard time believing it will do poorly with engagement, unless they mess it up really bad, but I don't think they will based on how they have handled MCC and Halo 5's multiplayer. 

The Coalition needs to finish up the current Gears trilogy before moving on. Gears 6 is definitely happening and I'm looking forward to it, but I hope they do something new after because they are a very talented studio that need to try some new things. 

While i do agree that these features benefitted gamers, i really dont see these as being any sort of altruistic measures. We know that he XBone was lacking on the games front and we also know that this ia a difficult gap to fill in. MS's answer while waiting for its game studios to put out games was to polish and improve on all the other features it could to make it more attractive. They have clearly done that both last gen and this gen. But i still wouldnt call them the best. 

It is something similar to what sony did in the ps3 era when they were trying to win back gamers. Though they went down the route of authorising a whole bunch of experimental games.

IMO, Sony's Play at Home giveaway is more laudable as it is giving away free games that no one expected or even asked for. While most of these were pretty meh (or PSVR TITLES), this is a clear case of them doing something for nothing. Dont get me wrong - I dont necessarily think sony deserve the title of best this gen, but i also think neither MS (or nintendo) deserve it either.. YET. 

I dunno, I really don't like what Microsoft are doing. I've never been a fan of replacing one's collection with a game as a service, but more and more it's clear that's like 90% of what Microsoft is doing. Sure, it's 'good for the consumer' from a strict dollars to title ratio, but it takes a lot of control out of the hands of consumers/gamers. I'd much rather pay more for games I like and control which games I buy than pay a monthly fee for a list of games I don't control. I know there are a LOT of games on the service (Same as PSNow) and there should be plenty of variety to pick and choose, but I've always seen this sort of games-as-a-service model as just another step in them trying to wrest control from their consumers.

They forced online gaming on consoles to be a thing but they demanded payment when their competition wasn't doing so (PC and PS2 and Dreamcast, to an extent), and look at the Industry now. Everyone charges for it. They wanted to force everyone to be always-online for the sake of DRM, but people hated it. They wanted to restrict the use of used games, and people hated it so much that their major competitor made a joke out of it. But this? This is just another way to get the same thing. They're still controlling what you play, beholding you to their online services and making sure EVERYONE pays THEM. Conspiracy theory? maybe (let';s be honest, almost certainly), but it's the same thing in the end. the goal of forcing their customers to be online and to not trade/sell used games was always there, they just found a way to make it palatable to the gaming public and they did so by copying Netflix.

Honestly, I won't participate. I don't think what they're doing is good, long term, but I do know that enough people like it that it doesn't matter what I think. I resist this change, because I think it's bad, just like I won't support games like Anthem, or I won't buy into loot boxes or microtransactions or F2P Wankery. I know that's the direction the industry is going whether I like it or not, but I do not like it and I won't participate. Hell, back with their early Xbone games, weren;'t they one of the leaders in pushing microtransactions and Pay to Win mechanics in their games?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJBlWYqVQbQ

(Obviously, take this with a grain of salt. Jim Stephanie Sterling does tend to go overboard a lot but a lot of what he says here is well-supported and well-argued.)

microsoft are not the heroes people think they are, they're just another corporation trying time and time again to change the industry in ways that take control from gamers and put more control and money in their pockets by eliminating the chance that anyone could game for free or without sending them money. and 'unsung' is hilarious, especially on this forum. Can't go a day without someone extolling the (admittedly impressive) virtues of gamepass and how Microsoft is making the world a better place by...not having exclusives (because then...customers can chose what console they want? it's a weird argument and goes opposed to the whole 'healthy competition' argument I hear).

Oh, and @AngryLittleAlchemist is right. Forza Horizon fucks hard and continues to be a great game but it has been a whole generation since Halo or Gears was in any way influential or significant. Halo 1-3 and Reach are all genuine classics (I still don't like them but I'm not a fool). Halo 4 and 5 are good but not great games. Gears 1-3 are all huge leaps and fantastic games, but 4 and 5 are good but not great. Forza has been crummy most of the Xbox One's generation (though Horizon is great). outside of those franchises, what else has Xbox even got? They really aren't all that culturally relevant anymore. The die-hard fans stick around, brand loyalty is a powerful drug, and the console DOES have more raw power than its competitor, but I can't help but wonder how the hell anyone sees their latest offering as being innovative. It's got the same controller, the same UI, and the same feel of the Xbox One, it's just more powerful and has resume-states. How is that innovative compared to the Switch's console/handheld hybrid or PS5's far superior controller features.

I don't understand how Xbox is a hero of anything. IT's a perfectly fine, competent console that doesn't do a good job selling itself. I don't see how people think that the things its doing are particularly impressive or groundbreaking or in any way revolutionary. I'm just aggressively indifferent to it. It exists, it doesn't have any egregious flaws like the Xbox One had...but by all means it's just a more powerful Xbox One, while its competition bring innovation and games.

^Xbox is obviously not a real hero, they're a company like all the others. I'm using it as a figure of speech to point out that Xbox is doing quite a bit of consumer friendly moves that are being overlooked. I'm not sure how an optional service like Game Pass is taking control from a consumer. Everything on Game Pass can be bought separately, and until that day comes that it can't, then that argument is void.
Constantly bringing up the Xbox One faults as an excuse to not trust them anymore is the same as only looking at the ps3/WiiU issues and nothing else. Get over it or don't, I don't really care.
"They forced online gaming" lol. I guess offering a superior service and revolutionizing console online gaming is terrible. Online gaming was coming one way or the other, Xbox was just the 1st to make it big. Look at xbox live and PSN during the 6th and 7th gen. Xbox was superior in every which way and once Sony started charging for online they were able to catch up. You think people would prefer to have free PSN instead of what it is now? No way.
Which one of their early X1 games were they pushing pay2win mechanics? Nothing comes to mind unless you are thinking of KI, which was not pay2win at all.
You're conspiracy theory is just what it is or they wouldn't have dropped Gold from F2P and have free enhancements for all their games, plus 3rd party. Sony and even Nintendo(which they constantly get passes) do more to nickel and dime consumers or do shady moves than Xbox does right now, but lets ignore that part because Xbox was the bad guy last gen.

Honestly I wouldn't have bothered with a response, there's a strong core group of people that think MS will always be evil/greedy and never should have joined the console business.

Sony was doing MTX before Xbox, why aren't they saying Sony made it an industry standard? Because apparently Xbox did with paying online. You can find the hypocrisy pretty damn quick when you go point by point.

Thankfully, if you look at forums less obsessed with Sales and Fanboyism like Resetera, you see Xbox getting a fair amount of props for doing some very consumer friendly stuff. 

I completely disagree with that.

I think if we're going to look at the moves and reasons Xbox is being 'overlooked' we have to look at the PR and advertising prior to and during launch as well.

This included both of their heavily hyped showcases. One, which was predominantly third party games that showed off no "next gen" graphics or features, and then one of the most bizarre flagship reveals in the entire history of gaming - a decidedly rough looking Halo Infinite that was subsequently delayed. 

After the initial reveal of the Series X, the powerful hardware was given glowing reviews from the media and at an amateur level across social media channels, youtube etc. MS had shown their cards, and it looked like they had an ace. This was their moment to capitalize. 

They had some significant momentum building for the Series X. What followed was poorly executed by MS, and consumers became aware that they they didn't really have the software ready for the console. This was then followed by the revelation that not only were early multiplatform games not running significantly better on the most powerful console in the world, they were actually running better on the weaker PS5.

In essence, MS looked like they had the fastest, prized horse at the gate, then the gun fired and the horse came out with a limp. 

Features like BC and Cloud saves don't really push hardware. They're nice to have, but they're not moving units and swaying gamers over one console or the other. The vast majority don't even know the differences of these features between the consoles.

The term overlook is a failure to notice. I believe consumers have noticed the Series X. Early sales seem to be strong, but I think had MS made better moves, the Series X would have been riding much more momentum at this point. 

What game was that?

MS were pitching the idea of microtransactions to publishers in early 2005. They put it in Kameo, Perfect Dark and Project Gotham as a proof of concept to developers. Bethesda was the first to jump in on the Microsoft idea and the infamous $2.50 horse armour became a reality.