So, my thoughts on the showcase:
Format
On the one hand, it is nice to let the developers talk about their own games and show off gameplay. On the other hand, I'm not sure that what was presented was enough, coming off a year with no AAA exclusives and an Xbox no-show on The Game Awards. I see no reason why they needed to delay the Starfield showcase for it's own show later on, and I think they should have at least shown a 30 second teaser for Starfield with the date of the Starfield developer direct and the release date/window for the game itself.
I also think they needed to show the 2nd January Gamepass update here, the fact that there wasn't one tells me that January really is just 5 new games added to Gamepass, by far the weakest monthly Gamepass update yet, considering we usually get between 14 and 20 games added to Gamepass per month. This sends a really bad message about the future of Gamepass.
Overall, this felt weaker than Playstation's State of Play digital shows and Nintendo's Directs. The format has potential, but needs some work for future developer directs.
Minecraft Legends
Looks better than I expected but still not my type of games.
Forza Motorsport
The game looks great graphically, the new audio and simulation stuff they talked about all sounds promising, and they announced that it will have more cars on release than I was expecting it to have, I figured 350 cars at most since it only entered full development in late 2019, so 500+ is nice for sure. However, the track count of 20 is disappointing, only 3 more than FM5 and 2 less than FM6. I was disappointed they didn't talk about the story mode/campaign at all, in the past they said they wanted to make the game more accessible to Forza Horizon fans by improving the campaign, it would have been nice to see which improvements we could expect to see on the campaign. The seeming delay on the game is also very disappointing.
HiFi Rush
I am legit impressed that Xbox managed to keep this hidden as well as they did, the game is releasing today and not even an ESRB rating for it leaked early from what I saw, all we got was Jez and a few other leakers stating the name and saying it looked like Jet Set Radio art wise, but nothing about the release date. The game looks fun and I will try to play it at some point.
ESO
Nothing too surprising here, nice to see them announce that the earlier expansions will be made free for a limited time.
Redfall
The gameplay and open world design seems solid, but I can't help but feel underwhelmed by the graphics. At one time, Arkane was pushing pretty hard on a technical level with their new Void Engine for Dishonored 2, in some ways Dishonored 2 looks better than what we have seen of Redfall even though it is 1 generation older. However, after Dishonored 2 underperformed in terms of sales, it feels like Bethesda pulled the plug on Arkane being able to push the limits on graphics, instead forcing them to scale back on graphics to cut down on their budgets and increase their chances of financial success. Deathloop from Arkane Lyon was underwhelming graphically (though made up for it in strong art design), and now Redfall from Arkane Austin looks even more underwhelming to me. Muddy textures, pixel shimmer galore during movement, doesn't look like the graphics have improved at all since their E3 demo 6 months ago. And unlike Dishonored and Deathloop, it doesn't even have strong art design to fall back on, both the graphics and the art design feel underwhelming this time around.
