I believe based on what we have right now the nominees are likely to be:

Locked:

- Zelda TOTK
- Baldurs Gate 3
- Spider Man 2

Competitive:

- Resident Evil 4
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Diablo IV
- Final Fantasy XVI

Competitive but likely to get snubed :

- Starfield
- Sea of Stars
- Street Fighter 6
- Mario Wonder
- Hi Fi Rush

Starfield can miss the nominations would be honestly a disaster for Xbox. It's their biggest game this generation so far and not even be nominated as one of the best games of the year is a slap in the face of the industry


This is an extremely crowded year so games thst would usually be easy locks in the competition like Mario Wonder and Street Fighter VI will struggle to get nominations



The question here is what they will put more emphasis when choosing their nominations. Will they push diversity in genres? Will they put more importance in technological archievments? The scope of the game? Or in artistic elements?

It's definitely a special year. I don't remember any other year with so many GOTY contenders

I think Microsoft's biggest game this gen is actually FH5. That game is on a trajectory to finish its run with more than 50m players. I don't think Starfield will be able to top it when it is all said and done; maybe ES6 could.

And about Starfield not being nominated being a slap, nah.. that slap already happened when they nominated Stray, and not only a slap to Microsoft, but to all the developers out there. When you look at how many awards that game got overall, you really start to wonder, who the heck are these judges who vote on the TGA? Heck, even Inmortality got more awards than Stray overall. 

Yeah the VGAs tend to pick their winners and nominees mostly based on how much prestige they have, and how much they fit their view of games as a serious artistic medium for grownups.
Stuff like Hi fi Rush and Mario Wonder don't really fit with this notion, so they're probably going to be overlooked.
Hogwarts Legacy, while an excellent game, will probably be excluded as the folks behind the VGAs will want to avoid being targeted by the harrassment campaigns aimed at those who have streamed and promoted the game by extremist activists.

Stray was a better game than starfield. For it's theme , what it set out to achieve, it was great experience. Some peole like playing games that offer something new, and not the same thing over with flashier graphics. Starfield for all the hype and importance of a game release, did not live to the expectations. Game is flawed in many areas. Maybe after dlc and patches down the road it can get to beings the game tod had envisiononed. As of now, most of the game feels shallow, empty. Doesn't even feel up to last gen standards.  

Oh, really? I guess that's why Starfield is STILL the 2nd most played single-player game on the entire planet. I guess people just love to walk around in shallow and empty games.

And I guess that makes Stray better than Spiderman 2 (and HFW) as well since, you know, people "like playing games that offer something new, and not the same thing over with flashier graphics".

Furthermore, if you're gonna measure games just by its novelty then both Immortality and Pentiment deserved the nomination more than Stray (something that many critics agree with, seeing as both of them got more awards overall).