Xbox has turned its 2025 sales and engagement data into a showcase, highlighting which games actually connected with players across its ecosystem. Under the banner of the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards, the company is using hard numbers from Xbox and Microsoft stores to spotlight both blockbuster franchises and smaller surprises. The result is a snapshot of how people really played in 2025, not just what trended on social media.
Rather than a traditional red-carpet ceremony, the program reads like a data-driven yearbook for the platform, with categories that span ratings, revenue and player behavior. This is also the second year Xbox has run the initiative, which helps explain why the 2025 list feels more confident and wide ranging than a one-off marketing beat.
The idea behind the Xbox Excellence Awards
The Xbox team set out to turn store analytics into something that feels celebratory rather than abstract, and the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards are the result. In a post attributed to Daniel Lingen, who is listed with the title Game Dev Advocacy, Xbox frames the program as a way to recognize how developers performed across Xbox and Microsoft stores. The company stresses that the categories are grounded in what players actually did, from buying and rating games to sticking with them over time, rather than in editorial picks.
That focus builds on an earlier explanation of the initiative on the developer side, where Xbox described how Now, more screens, and those screens are powered by an “incredible portfolio of games” released in 2024 on the Xbox Store. By tying the awards to store performance rather than a jury, Xbox is also sending a message to studios that strong launches, sustained engagement and high player satisfaction are visible inside the platform and can be formally recognized.
How the categories work and why they matter
The 2025 program is broken into clear buckets that map to different parts of the business, from Store Rating to top sellers and engagement-focused lists. In the section labeled Celebrating the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards, Xbox explains that Store Rating highlights the highest-rated content released in 2025, while other categories look at revenue and player counts within the first six weeks of release. That mix lets a small, highly rated indie sit alongside a global blockbuster that dominates sales, each in its own lane.
A separate breakdown of the winners notes that there are 55 games in total included in the 2025 program, with a dedicated list of the 20 best selling. Another summary of the announcement repeats that There are 55 in the awards overall, reinforcing that this is not a narrow short list but a broad survey of what sold and resonated on the platform.
Blockbusters that dominated sales
The sales-focused categories read like a who’s who of modern gaming, led by franchises that have been shaping charts for years. The list of 20 best sellers includes long-running open world hits such as Grand Theft Auto, which continues to move copies more than a decade after launch. Competitive shooters and large-scale action series also feature heavily, with new entries like Call of Duty: and the latest Battlefield 6 entry reflecting how military shooters still anchor the commercial side of the platform.
Big-budget action RPGs and cinematic adventures also stand out. Obsidian’s fantasy project Avowed appears among the highlighted titles, showing how new IP can compete for attention next to familiar names. Ubisoft’s historical epic Assassin’s Creed Shadows continues that pattern, while long-running service games such as Fortnite and Minecraft continue to generate revenue and engagement at a scale few newcomers can match.
Surprise hits and community favorites
Alongside the blockbusters, the awards shine a light on games that might not dominate mainstream headlines but clearly struck a chord with Xbox players. Cozy management and slice-of-life titles such as Minami Lane and factory-building sims like Satisfactory benefit from categories that track ratings and player retention instead of only raw sales. That structure lets slower-burn games, which often grow through word of mouth, earn recognition alongside launch-day juggernauts.
Player discussion around the awards has already highlighted some of these under-the-radar winners. In one widely shared Reddit thread titled Celebrating the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards, a commenter notes that one of the top-rated games “had the highest amount of ratings (4.1k reviews left)” and points to tracking on TrueAchievements to back that up. That kind of grassroots analysis shows how the awards are already feeding back into community conversations about which games deserve more attention.
Horror, action and RPG standouts
The genre spread inside the awards list also tells a story about where players gravitated in 2025. On the horror side, the long-awaited remake of Silent Hill 2 appears among the recognized titles, signaling strong interest in classic survival horror on Xbox hardware. Stylish indie action like Mullet MadJack and narrative-heavy RPGs such as Clair Obscur: Expedition underline how players are willing to support distinctive art styles and storytelling when they are surfaced on the store.
Japanese and action-focused series also make a strong showing. Sega’s crime saga heads to the Pacific in Like A Dragon:, while Koei Tecmo revisits large-scale hack-and-slash warfare in Dynasty Warriors: Origins. On the multiplayer side, the bug-blasting co-op shooter Helldivers 2 shows up both as a commercial success and as a cross-platform talking point, which has become even more interesting now that Sony has brought the game to Xbox.
