Mario himself seems to have a lot fun jumping around and its pretty infectious. Link (mostly), Splatoon inklings, animal crossing villagers, pokemon, and kirby do too. I don't think I can name any major titles on Xbox or Playstation where the characters' primary emotion is joy.
If you look closely enough, Nintendo design is oddball, but very purposeful.
Sony has been making tons of fun games to play with zero loot boxes in the game.
God of War, Last of Us, Uncharted, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Horizon are all top selling videos games in the past few years and all of them contain zero loot boxes.
All of them are highly loved video games as well.
Sony spent the last few decades buying gaming studio to make fun games for them. Almost all of them have nothing to do with loot boxes.
I think it more a problem of me letting the article dictate the terms of the discussion. Did Microsoft publish my whipping boy Call of Duty? Of course not, one can play CoD on a Playstation just as well, and any undesirable traits of the game lie at the feet of Activision.
It might be more accurate to bitch about Xbox Game Pass and the like, as there seems to be a hard push to just rent your access to games with a monthly payment. Or the acquisition of studios (as TFA makes a point of) so that $COMPANY has exlusive access to $HOT_GAME.
Also, your last sentence about exclusivity is a really strange point when comparing to Nintendo - which literally only does that. (And has extremely vicious customer unfriendly pricing. Breath of the Wild is still $60 5 years later).
Yet Nintendo has an extensive gacha lineup like Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, Pokemon GO, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes etc.
You might ignore it but don't pretend Nintendo is some holy divine protector of gaming.
This is one of the three major things that drove me away from gaming almost entirely over a decade ago.
(some exec) I know! NFTs and the blockchain!
Microsoft is sitting here with Game Pass giving people unlimited access to most games in their catalog for $15/mo including 0-day access to their biggest releases. Better yet, they do this cross platform so you can play them anywhere and keep your data in sync. And, if you don't want to subscribe to game pass you can STILL buy the games.
Meanwhile, Nintendo literally charges $59.99 for games released in early 2017.
I guess the point I'm driving at is, though I was always a cow to be milked, the last couple versions of Call of Duty (as just one example) have made it way too obvious now. In contrast to a first-party Nintendo game that just lets me play the game I bought.