It says a great deal that it was Halo: Infinite, not Project Scarlett, which closed Xbox’s keynote this year. Microsoft, through the vocal cords of Phil Spencer, has been telling us for years that Xbox is now a games-first company, cognitively detaching itself from Xbox One’s botched all-in-one introduction. This keynote acted as much like a manifesto as an advertising sizzle reel, proudly boasting of its 60 games on show and blasting through them at breakneck pace (although, as some have rightly pointed out, not showing a great deal of actual gameplay in the process). And then we got the Scarlett-Halo one-two punch.
In a world with Stadia in it, it was an important point for Spencer to explain that, yes, this is a real, physical console and, yes, games are what it’s made for. Functionally, what we saw was based on the Xbox One X reveal template, a revolving cast of talking heads telling us impressive, vague things – like how it can display framerates faster than the human eye can perceive or how it can output a brand new colour. But tucked in there was the mention of hundreds of developers working on games for Scarlett, and here’s one now! Halo: Infinite is obviously a Very Big Deal, but it’s quite amazing to think that the next generation of Xbox would play second fiddle to it.
Source: IGN.com Xbox E3 2019 Conference Review