AAA games typically takes 5 plus years to make nowdays. They were bound to hit a drought at some point. It seem this is that point.
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Personally I think Sony deliberately front loaded their release schedule for the PS5. IMO with the 3rd party money hats they managed, and ones we know they went for the goal was to try and remove as much content from Xbox as possible in the first 2-3 years and drop as much of their first party content as they could. All with the intention to “finish off” Xbox before the new first party kicked into gear. After that a small drought wouldn’t matter.
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You can see what Sony tried to do with Starfield, but it backfired.
They’ve created a monster now that will not sit in the corner and lose potential ground in the entertainment sector… That monster could buy Sony every year with their profits accumilated in a fiscal year.
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Maybe Sony just thought Horizon Forbidden West was so amazing that everyone would still be playing it all the time for 3 years straight!
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With the current Playstation leadership things may also turn shitty for the PS fans if a 1st party GAAS game turns out a hit too. Why make more high budget sad dad games when you can make more money with GAAS? Jimbo will wonder. 
This will be a very interesting generation for sure, especially seeing how each brand will be perceived (image wise) at the end tail of the generation. If anything it’s pretty apparent that Xbox (and Phil in particular) is playing the long game.
I just don’t see anything truly remarkable about their single player games tbh. I would even use the term “overrated” to describe most of their stuff. The actual good stuff on PS is usually from third parties ( it’s been this way since the PS1. (Playstation is the house built buy third parties one might say) Like their best game Bloodborne which is Fromsoft. The first party stuff I did like , namely Gravity Rush 1 and 2 which actually were very unique games that felt different from their usual stuff and they shut down the studio.
Now everything they do put out is a variation of what Ubisoft has been doing for years, Spiderman, and some form of “Sad dad” game that would rather be a movie and no their stories aren’t amazing either IMO.
Meanwhile on Xbox there is an actual diverse line up of games coming down the pike which look to put gameplay first with the exception of Hellblade 2. ( Xbox’s “sad dad” variant)
Also don’t buy the whole “earned good will” stuff. Sony has had many missteps over the years too ( swept under the rug or forgotten of course) and all the good will of the 360 era didn’t seem to get Xbox a pass last gen. Even when Sony shit the bed with the PS3 the media wasn’t so quick to turn on them and was very quick to praise when they got their shit together finally. You never saw any hit pieces on TLOU before it launched or any other PS3 exclusive for that matter.
There is a combo of blind cult like loyalty to Playstation brand and a blind hatred of Microsoft and by extension Xbox. If one didn’t know any better and listen to how many talk of the three brands, they would think that Microsoft is the only corporation of the three while Sony is a small creative outfit, not for profit and Nintendo is a mom and pop run business.
Social media has help to engrain these narratives into people as well to the point where they’re convinced Xbox never had any worthwhile software ( despite many of their favorite IP’s starting on Xbox) not to mention being indoctrinated to think the only worthwhile games are big AAA “cinematic” (ugh) games with a third person camera and some form of morality pet to escort, to make it easier to dismiss the many great xbox games over the years because it doesn’t fit this mold. As in “Forza Horizon and Flight Sim don’t count”.
I’ve even seen people claim that Starfield is the first time that Xbox may have a “cultural phenomenon” like "Mario , Zelda and (lol) TLOU and GOW ". I guess we’ve forgotten Halo 3 and Gears of War as well as a little thing called Minecraft.
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IMO, Sony earned their reputation with strong games in the PS3 and PS4 eras like Uncharted, TLOU, God of War. But the reputation became so unassailable and such a given that now Sony games earn their accolades and GOTY nominations before they even come out. And so now you have games like Stray or Kena or Ghost of Tsushima that wouldn’t be in the conversation except for Sony exclusivity being a free ticket to the A-list; and “more of the same” sequels like Ragnarok and Forbidden West that didn’t even seem to excite the diehard fans that much, but are guaranteed a GOTY nomination slot because that’s just how you treat a AAA Sony game when you’re a media outlet or an awards show.
The reputation was legitimately earned but now it’s so pre-programmed, the actual game barely matters.
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It will be interesting to see the reaction when they start putting their GAAS initiative in effect, since we know that they’re going t invest hard in it and supposedly GAAS is the antithesis of what Playstation is about as I’ve been told.
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I think that the effect COVID-19 had on development also happened to hit in such a way that the timing worked out better for Sony than MS. I’m sure that they have the luxury of shuffling things around a bit, but I think their games are too expensive for them to pull a Nintendo and just sit on games that are ready.
It’s been a while but the way I remember it or at least experienced it is that the Xbox One reveal instantly burned through all the goodwill the 360 had garnered. The perception at the time was that MS got arrogant and tried to push things too hard, things with which most people were uncomfortable. I was ambivalent towards my PS3 and loved my 360 but they completely lost me to the point where I didn’t even pay attention to Xbox until like 2019.
I don’t remember the state of game journalism at the time (or rather I wasn’t savvy enough to look at it critically), but I think that the very real missteps the PS3 had just weren’t as widely denigrated because we weren’t in as much of a social media age. The PS3 reveal was a massive joke and a huge fumble but the fallout was relatively self-contained to… well, us, people like us who argue about games online.
Again, this was a question of MS making mistakes at critical points, like how Spencer said that the last gen was the worst one they could have lost because of digital libraries.
Hard agree with the rest of your post though.
Essentially, MS are paying for some loud mistakes in the past while dealing with unwarranted bad public perception and genuinely biased reporting. Bias can be unintentional or intentional and I think it’s present in both forms in our current landscape.
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Yeah I’ve been saying this for years at this point 
Seriously go back and look at some of the crazy pushback I used to get. I was way ahead of the curve on this one 
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Starfield is starting the long game. Skyrim will finish it.
Avowed, Hellblade 2, Outerworlds 2, Indiana Jones, Fable etc will cement Xbox’s position in the short grass. And that’s without the positivity for the brand with COD, Diablo etc coming on board.
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But…Spider-Man 2.
Seriously though, it doesn’t surprise me at all. And it’s not looking like next year will be all that much better.
I would just like to point out Sony’s complete absence at Gamescom. If MS skipped Gamescom, the panic level and “concern” for the future of Xbox would hit a fever pitch and there would be countless articles written about it. “Xbox has no games?” 
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Sony gets to have 1 showcase every 2 years and not really show a roadmap of future games and Sony fans and the media just shrug and say well it’s “Sony”
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“Once they spin up they will start pumping out AAA games”
Over on otherEra i’m reading fan-fic cope about all of Sonys studios are multi-game studios and have 2 projects on the boil.
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And then they are surprised why they didn’t get an early review copy…
If I was in Bethesda’s position, I would give them a review copy while making sure that their score weight on Metacritic is crushed.
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I won’t speak for anyone else but as long as I get two full (not timed) console exclusives for PlayStation 5 a year, im happy. Already had Final Fantasy XVI this past June and will get Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 in October.
For 2024, I already have Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Marvel’s Wolverine and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth which is 4 console exclusives, 3 of them are first party. I’m 50/50 on Granblue Fantasy Relink and Lost Soul Aside which is from Sony and part of their China Hero Project. Including MLB The Show 24 and Sony will have at least 5 first party games. Add in a live service game or two and it could be as many as 7 first party games.
In general, as I said with post #25, things are actually very evenly matched. It’s just that Xbox and PlayStation fans like to claim that the other side has no first party games when in reality, they both do but these fans who claim this simply don’t like the other platform’s games as if that somehow eliminates them from existing. SMH.
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I been saying forever that Sony has released most of their heavy hitters EARLY and I mean as early as the late PS4 gen, and with AAA titles taking a long time we are going to see a drought from them. Seriously, when is Wolverine even coming out??? I agree the media has been ignoring this.
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Ah yes, I stand corrected.
I forgot about FF16 this year. Have Insomniac confirmed Wolverine for next year?
No but they’re very efficient so im expecting November 2024 until Insomniac announces otherwise.