I’ll lead off with this: The Infinite demo looks great. It’s everything I think anyone could’ve reasonably expected it to be. Pickups making a comeback looks terrific, the grappling hook looks like an interesting new mechanic that can hopefully be toggled off in custom games, the world looks expansive but not empty, etc. Very good stuff.
However. It’s the only showstopper that showcase gave. Halo: Infinite is being expected to carry the Series X. Microsoft has acquired several studios, but they haven’t lined up anything truly spectacular as a next gen showcase aside from Infinite.
The entire rest of the show was vague teases (Some more promising than others-- Avowed and Fable both having a lot of potential, but likely neither coming out within the next year plus) or gameplay for fairly run-of-the-mill third party games that are “launch exclusives” (read, "On Playstation 5 six months after they launch on XSX).
Psychonauts looks good too, but it’s not been deconfirmed for Playstation, so it isn’t a feather in Xbox’s cap. Game Pass represents an insane value and a ton of content to play on Xbox, but it isn’t a hype machine in and of itself.
Overall, all I got out of the showcase event was that Halo: Infinite literally has to be as much of a killer exclusive for the XSX and other Xbox platforms as Combat Evolved was for the OG Xbox, or Microsoft will roll out of the gate in very “meh” fashion when they needed to perform excellently to make up for a generation firmly in last place.
Here’s hoping that Infinite can truly shoulder that. Anyways, what are anybody else’s thoughts on the non-Halo parts of the showcase?