Yeah we've been over that, and it's a really weak response. I'll explain why. Again.
They didn't really have many games, and some of them they really had no hand in creating.
There was Halo (which is a bad game IMO, and I can easily enumerate why. But why wait for me? Go look at what the fans are saying in the Halo threads), and it's basically dead at this point.
Age of Empires, Not an Xbox game. Do not care about that here. I used to like this game when I had a PC but I'm not into RTS anymore, and again ... you're talking Xbox, and this is not Xbox.
Then there was Flight Sim. IMO, this is not a good console game. Have you even played it? I have. It's clearly a PC game shoehorned into a console and it shows. It also doesn't look nearly as good as some people like to claim. The pop in, the shifting of landscapes as you fly around, and terrible detail as you reduce your altitude ... it is what it is. A flying sim for people who are serious about ... flying sims. I don't for a second believe the Xbox warriors here are firing up FS and putting in hours and hours on the title.
Forza is not my thing. It's cool for people that it is I'm sure. Xbox has something here for sure.
Psychonauts 2 is incredibly average and felt low budget to me. The guise of the story is just not that clever. Things like, fighting doubts and regrets and how the levels work ... they are obvious things to do given the subject matter, and the gameplay just was not tight at all IMO.
Those five games are your entire list for the year. On top of that, one of them was purchased by MS well into dev, one is not really a game, one is a complete disappointment, and one isn't even on Xbox.
You can cling to the idea that this merits a "publisher of the year" from a site like Meteoritic, but since I actually own and play all of these platforms and games I will reiterate that Xbox continues to be, for me, the most disappointing console ecosystem I own by far. To the point where I am considering selling mine off and getting again IF Starfield is worth playing, but we will see. I sold my PS5 last year and regretted it and bought it again, so not sure I want to do that with Xbox yet.
I don't even know what Sony had last year, or what their total score is, but they had 10 unique releases compared to MS's 5 and Returnal absolutely spanked anything released by MS (and Nintendo) last year. Again, you have to play these things in depth to get it. Not just play console warrior games on forums and such. I'm here for the games. That's why I can say things like "publisher of the year" means absolutely nothing when the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is bland and has an odd skin on top. Sorta like that year "Shakespeare in Love" won Best Picture. Nobody takes that stuff seriously.
Think about it. If you need to point to an award from a site that means nothing as proof that your system of preference is doing well, while gamers are like "just look at the cavalcade of games coming out on Switch and Playstation" ... don't you think that might mean something? If you don't understand what I mean, just take a little time to think about it.