If that's your takeaway then you aren't listening to what I'm saying.
Fair enough
You have it backwards. You think an uptick in ice-cream eating causes the weather to get hotter, instead of the other way around.
The Xbox One and PS4 were the same architecture too, they still had exclusives. And yet that entire generation was shit too.
The X1 and PS4 were shit, no argument from me. If MS hadn't taken the direction of corporate greed, then the X1 and PS4 would have had a chance of being different. They exclusives that they had were generally at the start of the gen, and then just rehashes over and over. Bloodborne, The Order, Killzone, Infamous to a name a few early-years ones, followed by sequels. MS followed the same pattern.
The PS4 started out promising; cheap, simple, relatively powerful. Then they shit the bed at the end
If you want unique hardware, you're simply deluded. There were too many headaches involved with constantly changing hardware generation to generation. It makes zero finanical sense to design a modern console on unique architecture when Intel/AMD/Nvidia are already at the top of the game.
Games already have massive budgets without having to develop for your dream platform that uses esoteric chip #12512.
I think I can see where we are talking past each other here. What I want is a stable, functioning industry. I know it won't happen while the bean counters run the show because, as you correctly say, there's no need to build your own gear when someone else is doing it better.
I suppose the best we could hope for is AMDvsNvidia+Intel vs whatever Apple is doing.
Diversifying the consoles hardware - and I use that word in the financial sense, not the faggoty one, would push us back towards better creativity. A sign of creativity is healthy, unique exclusives that show off what each team/hardware can do and what visions the leaders of the Big 3 had.
Modern day execs are cunts. J Allard and Peter Moore were great. Kaz was a nutcase but he was funny. Iwata was a cool dude.
That's fine, but you are attributing the decline of the game industry to nonsensical things while ignoring the problems that have effected every other industry. The game industry isn't unique and its decline has nothing to do with exclusives.
I disagree with this part. The gaming industry is unique in that it takes a little bit of every other industry and adds a twist. When second hand sales were being clamped down on it was compared to books. When Gamepass started it was compared to Netflix and streaming services and modern day AAA games are called movies. Yet, none of those industries can take from gaming and adapt it to their own.
The decline isn't limited to the lack of exclusives, but the lack of exclusives is the flag waving after the battle; it's a symbol that shows all is lost. In the same vein, the push for BC dealt a damaging blow to consoles. Why own the next gen when this gen will be supported for the next two years? If early adopters aren't getting unique exclusives, why buy the hardware?
The hardware doesn't sell so the industry doubles-down on BC, trying to capture more audience; HZD and GOW2 for example.
When they don't sell it's time to put the games on PC to capture more sales. Then the vicious cycle continues.
However, the chain can be broken and the slop removed is the PS5/XSX launched with no BC and only unique games exclusive to each platform.
There are other issues like target audiences and politics, but those poor pieces of shit would be kicked out of the industry at best and priced out at worst, if we didn't give scruffs the ability to buy a £100 PS4 to play £500 games.
astle of Illusion) was much better than the disney slop of today. This isn't rose tinted glasses. 
