I can absolutely relate. I bought a series x at launch with the exact same idea, and have had the same disappointment. Minecraft and Borderlands have been about the only solid split screen titles on this whole generation. That being said, I do feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the hardware. It just didn't play out like I was hoping. Also, I agree with the article's complaint about gamepass. I had ultimate starting when I bought the console in 2020. I don't remember what I paid at the beginning, but I think it was like $8/month. They lost me when they just upped it from $20-$30. I mean, $20 was already a stretch, but a 50% increase on top of that? Bye.
Quite hard to find couch coop these days. People play mostly online. Overcooked, It Takes Two, Larian studios games are the ones we’ve found that we enjoy as a couple. But realistically only Overcooked is drop in arcade like playable.
Though one vertical shooter “sky force reloaded” is super fun in the old style.
The ONLY split-screen games I've found of any use on Xbox are the various silly cooking/moving games (which are fun), Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and ... that's basically it.
I ended up getting a steam deck which is just amazing and the kids ended up on on tablets (minecraft/roblox) and on PCs (arma and such).
For split screen we ended up occasionally connecting the steam deck to the tv and re-pairing Xbox controllers to it.