2025 was an unbelievable 12 months for gaming and, earlier than we run full-tilt into 2026, we needed to take a second to rejoice the titles that Xbox gamers made part of their 12 months, throughout all gadgets – from console, to PC, to handheld, to cloud. At this time, we’re asserting the recipients of the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards.
Launched final 12 months, the Xbox Excellence Awards rejoice video games – and the groups behind them – primarily based on how you engaged with Xbox during the last 12 months. As such, we’ve picked out 4 key classes, which signify gamers’ enthusiasm, ardour, engagement, and love. These 4 classes are:
- Retailer Ranking: The very best-rated content material throughout our shops launched in 2025, with a minimal of 500 scores.
- Participant Engagement: The video games with the very best common hours per-player throughout the first six weeks of launch.
- Every day Lively Customers: Video games, expansions, or main updates with the very best single-day energetic customers in 2025. Chances are you’ll discover video games that weren’t launched in 2025 on this checklist – that’s as a result of they received a major replace final 12 months.
- Items Offered: High-selling content material throughout Xbox and Microsoft shops.
The ultimate checklist represents a various assortment of titles produced by studios of wildly various sizes. You’ll discover 55 whole video games, with 16 at the moment accessible by Xbox Sport Move. It options 48 distinctive builders hailing from 13 nations, and dropped at you by 24 publishers, alongside 19 self-published titles. Taken as an entire, it’s an encapsulation of improvement on Xbox – we would like gaming to succeed in you wherever you might be, and for the groups making these video games to search out you from wherever they are. You could find the titles for every class – listed alphabetically – under.
