I don't know why you keep taking about "you didn't even play these games" because that's completely irrelevant to judging the general reception and performance of the titles. Personal feelings are irrelevant. You don't need to have played the games to know that the only release that was nailed by Xbox this year was hifi rush, the other three releases all have differing amounts of negativity surrounding them and their launches. Redfall was critically panned and flopped, Forza has horrendous steam reviews and flopped and Starfield is the worst reviewed SP Bethesda RPG, has a lot of negativity surrounding it and seemingly failed to get Xbox hardware selling.

For the record I have played Forza, and purchased early access to Starfield. Not that personally playing these titles is relevant in the slightest. "I personally liked these games" doesn't mean they had a good year of releases. The metric of success isn't your own personal feelings.

After a horrendous 2022 this was Xbox's time to launch a good line-up and in general they screwed it up. Even if you want to give Starfield a pass 50% of their releases do not pass.

To have a worse generation than Xbox One sales wise isn’t some mystery reason, it’s simply they’ve reached the peak of who’s willing to buy a Xbox console. MS has devalued Xbox as a hardware platform to a point it’s practically worthless. Starting next gen early isn’t going to fix that, the only people buying the system en mass are the Xbox loyal/hardcore fans. So no they shouldn’t end their generation early.

Edit: wrong thread lol

I've owned every MS, Sony and Nintendo home console released..  except the new Xbox.  The Xbox has nothing I can't get on the PC.  Thus Xbox has little value.  Granted Sony is moving in the same direction but at least has timed exclusives with FF, Ragnorok and Spider 2.  Nintendo obviously is loaded with exclusives.  Xbox, as a brand, has been massively devalued.

Did you seriously just try to use the Steam reviews that have been getting increasingly negative over time and have been mostly negative for the past several weeks as evidence for Starfield being well received overall? There has been a clear trend in its reception since launch and it has not been positive. The biggest Xbox release of the year getting this much negative and middling reception undeniably brings their year down at least somewhat and combined with stuff like Forza Motorsport and Redfall their year has been quite mixed for them software wise. I hope 2024 is better since Xbox needs a strong year.

I just showed how Starfield is liked overall by critic and audiences from numerous sources. It's one if the best selling games or steam and Xbox this year. It's one of the best selling games overall this year while still being on Game Pass. 14 Million people have played the game. Yet, people arguing with me like it's the worst game ever and a commercial flop.

MS having a hard time selling hardware is a bigger issue than Starfield reception or any other Xbox game this year. Xbox didn't release a Starfield console bundle, Forza bundle, or hifi Rush bundle. Xbox didn't have any aggressive price drops all year until late November and December, and in fact raised the price on hardware earlier in the year. While Playstation 5 saw numerous price drops throughout the year. It seems pretty obvious to me why Xbox didn't sell well this year. Xbox sold more consoles last year while having a much worse 1st party offering and less great 3rd party games. Based on this information, even if Starfield, Forza, and Redfall all saw glowing reviews, it likely wouldn't have effected console sales in any dramatic and still sold worse than last year. 

Also ignoring the Steam threads, the countless mods being used on PC to FIX THE GAME, or the constant talks on YT of the issues with the game's mechanics, really poorly written story, to a point where Pete Hines spends a chunk of time bitching at anyone who has anything to say that isn't outright praise to the game as "wrong", and so on.

Also to note that SF was one of the biggest releases this year, and yet it won nothing at TGA this year, whilst other games, even those smaller ended up winning awards and earning high praise. The ones I've seen who give praise and don't challenge Beth, have given off impressions that they:

Don't care about actual good writing (Many people have proven beth's bad writing for years now).

Don't care about the plethora of loading screens.

Don't care that this is once again another Beth game releasing with an assload of bugs.

Don't care about dated mechanics.

Don't care about having or leaving a footprint within the game's world.

I know Sony isn't doing any better, turning to live service crap, turning Insomniac into a Marvel machine, and so on, but Xbox really need to get it's collective shit together, and those who even like the brand, need to actually challenge MS, not bat for them, actually challenge them (which involves the lack of praise and the desire to want refinement).

I did because based on how some of you act, you would think the positive reviews and disliked reviews were switched. Then of course there is all the other sources I provided. I have a hard time taking someone seriously leaving a negative review after they have already played 200, 300, 400, or more hours. They obviously found some level of enjoyment from the game, but now feel burned out and every little thing gets to them. I can't imagine playing a game for that long and not enjoying it. If I really dislike a game, I'm not playing more than 5-10 hours. Then of course some are leaving negative reviews simply in retaliation for Bethesda commenting. Likely a big part of such a dramatic increase in dislikes. It's not like gamers can't be petty or anything. Someone even posted an example in this thread lol. 

Gaming 

Now critic reception matters when talking about awards? Lol. A lot of great games came out this year. Plenty of other well made games got snubbed for varies awards as well. It doesn't mean much. Sony won as many awards as Starfield did so that should tell you something lol. 

I thought the writing in the game was pretty good. I really don't understand this issue. Certainly not terrible like you are saying it is.

Loading screen can be annoying but not enough to ruin the game. Most are less than 10 seconds. 

The game being a buggy mess is over blown. Considering the scale of the game, it's well polished. After my 85 hours I ran into only a handful of bugs, mostly small, and only had one crash. Starfield is considerable less buggy than other Bethesda games as launch. 

As far as gameplay goes. I've enjoyed the gunplay. It feels smooth and responsive. Easily Bethesda's best feeling. People seem to still enjoy older Bethesda games with those same dated mechanics, but not it's a problem.

Leaving a footprint on the gaming world? Lol. It's not that serious. People can enjoy the game for what it is. 

Of course I could go over all the things it does. Shooting mechanics feel responsive and fun. Fantastic soundtrack. Great ship building mechanics and design. Overall graphics and look, especially environments, are great. Flying combat is solid. Plenty of varied locations and set pieces give it sense of scale of how big the universe is. Some great side missions and faction missions. An interesting way of tackling new game+. 

I'm getting bored of this conversation and thread in general. Later. 

Sorry, this is one of the most dishonest takes I read in recent times. Hogwarts Legacy, Spiderman 2, Diablo IV - all big releases which won nothing at the TGA. The reason is not that they are bad, the reason is that 2023 had more outstanding games than usual.

The winner of GOTY in the TGA (and many other GOTY-awards) is Baldur's Gate and has also I think taken home the most awards at the TGA. Baldur's Gate has quite some loading screens, which actually can take some time. It has comparable bugs and glitches to Starfield. And I could vomit every time I read 'dated anything' as a critic about games. In an earlier thread I said Baldur's Gate III is a 90s game at heart and that's why I love it. It uses dated mechanics such as turn-based combat, isometric view, pointing the cursor to your goal and clicking (even with controller) instead of choosing for instance enemies to hit from a menu and controlling a whole party instead of just one character. In a way Baldur's Gate is the most dated game all year, the reason it gets so much praise is that these mechanics are so long out of use, that game journalists have forgotten they once have criticised these mechanics and most recent players probably haven't even played a game before using such mechanics. So most of your points can be levelled at the most praised game of 2023.

This leaves your with two points: good writing and leaving a footprint. Well, I think most games that are coming out of an AAA studio nowadays aren't leaving any footprint and don't intend to. Some of these games won some awards. And writing... this is highly subjective. But I would argue that Starfield's writing beats Mario Wonder and Pikmin 4, both games which got at least *some* awards. I also think good writing is not needed for a good game at all. Silly games or plotless games can be great.

Do you really think these are good points you brought up? I think these are silly points that aren't the result of thinking but about retroactively justifying the decision that you decided Starfield must be bad.

I played Starfield and it made me pick up No Man's Sky again, because I like the more phantastical universe of NMS more than a realistic take like Starfield's. Did Todd Howard overpromise? Sure as hell, but we knew that already, he is Todd Howard after all. I don't think it is a great game. But I cannot understand the hate it is getting. It has no egregious bullshit like microtransactions, battle passes or loot boxes. It is actually a decent game. I can easily name games that are far worse: Forspoken, Immortals of Aveum, Redfall, Gollum, Atomic Heart, Atlas Fallen, Cities Skylines II, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. All this year, many big releases, all easily far worse than Starfield. Starfield got a Metacritic score of 83 and 86 respectively. Not a 90+ score, but definitely a good one.

So why do you think Starfield is really such a bad game? It looks to me like it is just a normal big AAA game, nothing outstanding, but nothing so bad we need to discuss. Why is it singled out? I don't know really, seems like the opportune thing to do.

And please abstain from such massicely dishonest takes like the above quoted, that is more for derailing discussion than the intention of serious additions to the topic.