1st party or not, there was clearly a gap between launch window games and 2021 games.

Aside from Halo Infinite, most of the interesting stuff won't be released this year anyway. No Forza, no Fable, no Hellblade, no Avowed, no State of Decay 3.
MS is trying to survive the year with Halo, third party exclusives on Game Pass and Xbox One compatible games/ports. 2021 should be far better though.

This is genuinely the most excited I've been about Halo in a long time. The gameplay looked super tight, all the weapons looked distinct, and weighty. The world looks massive, and interesting to explore. And ya...the character models aren't all that, but tbh, the only thing I really took away from that is that we're likely to be able to see massive amounts of units on screen, in some seriously epic battles. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Honestly, if that stuff had any chance for 2021 they would've shown 2021 on the trailers. The fact they couldn't get gameplay for any of those big titles says it all. Don't get your hopes up.

Visually Halo Infinite really wasn't all that great but TBH it looked like the very first mini teaser which didn't impress me all that much either.
The demo also had a few issues. Right at the beginning there was foliage popping in and out right at the bottom of the screen. Viewing distance wasn't that great either and there was smoke or clouds or something that were popping in and out too at the end of the demo.

Not like Halo will be Halo alone. Gears Tactics and Flight SIM making the cut likely. It’s ok to hold back the big guns. Xbox has a rep of starting big and taper off. Like Sony launching with Spiderman MM and build from there that’s what I see Xbox doing. 

I have mixed feelings after watching the show tbh. Would rate it around 6-7/10. I came in with low expectations but the problem is that many industry sources were hyping the event like it would be a lot better than Sony's showing but unfortunately for MS, I think it's hard to pick the winner here because both shows were pretty average and underwhelming.

As for positives:
- Halo Infinite looked great even though I see that a lot of people complaining about it. Yeah, it seems like a lot of complains are about graphics. The game didn't look a true next gen but for me the more interesting part is the gameplay. Because from my perspective they really took a huge step in terms of evolution of gameplay - transitioning game to open world, I can't wait to see it for myself whether it does pay off or not. But this game is definitely something to wait for.
- A lot of Series X/PC games despite Xbox execs stating that they would support Xbox One for quite some time. I'm personally all for ditching old hardware to squeeze the maximum potential of Series X hardware. (Funnily, this fact is also a negative, which I'll explain below)
- Yuji Naka game was a great announcement during pre-show. Also good to see DQ XI S coming to Xbox even though I'll probably won't play it as it is a very long game.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - I'm not a big fan of this franchise, never played the game. But this game being console exclusive and premiering on Xbox show is a huge thing here in Russia. People are going insane over this and this game alone is enough to claim that Xbox show won over PS (lol). Nice to see MS adapting to make moves for expansion in other regions where they are currently crushed by PS because of their US-centric marketing approach.

Now for negatives:
- The biggest disappointment of the show was of course the fact that most of the games shown are probably 2022 titles. This of course comes from them being Series X/PC only. And also, no footage being shown for the majority of the games confirms them being in early development. Forza Motorsport is confirmed to be in early development (Series X/PC) only, so even those who thought that it will release in H1 2021 were probably wrong. I can't see this game releasing earlier than late 2021 at best. Most likely 2022. The same goes for other big announcements - Hellblade 2, Fable, Avowed. All of these games are 2022 and beyond. So, basically MS has the same problem that Sony has - major games are not coming until 2022. It puts MS in a huge disadvantage in my opinion because they should have used the chance to start releasing a great game after great game before Sony started pumping out there games, to win over consumers.
- The show has done nothing to increase my faith in Japanese support getting better. Yeah, I'm being realistic so I've actually never expected it to get better, but still. Would have gladly been proven wrong. Though, it's worth mentioning that MS had at least 1 Japanese game at their show (PSO 2 upgrade) over 0 from Sony.
- As some local game journalists summed up after the show - MS marketing department is bad at showing their strengths. If they don't have enough games to show the gameplay of them for now, just focus on things you do best. If free multiplayer is coming, announce it here. Don't need to restrict it to be just Games Showcase because reasons.

To summarize, I still would probably put MS show above Sony one because I liked Halo, but I'm gonna go with a hot take and say that May show was better than this one. Both shows have shown just CG trailers and gameplay was only shown for Halo, so here is a parity. I personally liked May showing announcements more for the most part because they were games coming soon and I could see what the games were about unlike the games shown in this one. Though, I'd like to commend Team Xbox for making this one more professional without shitty webcams. Still getting Series X and Halo Infinite day one but the show should have been better especially considering MS weak position in console market today.

Wasn't the segment of Crossfire, Stalker, etc. being the XGP thing?

Thinking about Destiny 2 and all the current expansions been on Gamepass is pretty big when you would need to pay £40-50 to get these now and when you consider the new expansion Beyond Light that is £35/$40 been there day one in November it' could be the biggest deal Xbox has struck with the expansion and next gen boost Destiny 2 would get they likely expected a couple mil sales for this through the holidays.

You're right about a lot of this, but honestly, just looking at what you've written, they would've struggled to fit that into a 2 hour showcase. I think you were hoping for a bit too much here.

I feel like they basically did the minimum amount of what they needed to do, but it's still a passing grade. They have room to improve, but it's a good start for the generation.

Now we know where Joseph Staten went to.