In a new post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft has revealed the 20 best-performing games of 2025 on Xbox platforms. While the company hasn’t provided exact sales figures, it has instead laid out the data in the form of a table with four distinct categories: Store Rating, Player Engagement, Daily Active Users, and Units Sold. It is worth noting that while it looks like the last two of these categories were topped by Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders, Microsoft has simply listed all games in alphabetical order, and the lists below in no way indicates a ranking of any kind.
The post is a the latest iteration of the Xbox Excellence Awards, which was created last year to celebrate how players engaged with various releases on Xbox. The Store Rating category lists 2025 games with the best ratings on the Microsoft Store, with an added requirement of the title having at least 500 ratings. Player Engagements is about the average number of hours spent on a game by each player within the first six weeks of a game’s release. Daily Active Users celebrates titles, expansions or updates with the highest single-day active users throughout the year. And finally Units Sold is fairly self-explanatory.
Going down the lists, you’ll find many of the biggest releases of the year, from ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, as well as award-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Indie titles have also been well-represented, with games like Crime Scene Cleaner and Satisfactory making it into the lists. There also doesn’t seem to have been a singular genre to dominate the lists, since everything from sports games like EA Sports Madden NFL 26, to fantasy adventure life sims like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, and even fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics are well represented.
Curiously, none of the games was present in all four of the categories. At most, we got to see titles like Borderlands 4 being able to make it on to three of them: Player Engagement, Daily Active Users and Units Sold. Even ARC Raiders, which has seen quite a bit of success, is only on the Units Sold and Daily Active Users lists.
Microsoft has also emphasized that the lists represent a diverse collection of games developed by studios of varying sizes. All in all, it represents 48 unique developers based out of 13 countries, with 24 publishers having had a hand in their release. 19 of the games were self-published. “Taken as a whole, it’s an encapsulation of development on Xbox – we want gaming to reach you wherever you are, and for the teams making those games to find you from wherever they are,” wrote the company.
Full list of games:
Store Rating:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Crime Scene Cleaner
- Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2
- Digimon Story: Time Stranger
- Dreamcore
- Dynasty Warriors: Origins
- Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
- Final Fantasy XVI
- Lies of P: Overture
- Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
- Little Nightmares III
- Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
- Minami Lane
- Mullet MadJack
- Poppy Playtime Chapter 4
- Satisfactory
- Silent Hill 2
- Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
- The First Berserker: Khazan
Player Engagement:
- Borderlands 4
- Digimon Story: Time Stranger
- Dynasty Warriors: Origins
- EA Sports College Football 26
- EA Sports FC 26
- Elden Ring Nightreign
- Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
- Farm Together 2
- Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
- Helldivers 2
- Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
- MLB The Show 25
- Monster Hunter Wilds
- NBA 2K26
- NHL 26
- Rust
- Satisfactory
- The First Berserker: Khazan
Daily Active Users:
- Arc Raiders
- Avowed
- Battlefield 6
- Borderlands 4
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- DOOM: The Dark Ages
- Elden Ring Nightreign
- Fortnite
- Forza Horizon 5
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Grounded 2
- Helldivers 2
- Marvel Rivals
- Minecraft
- NBA 2K26
- Rematch
- Roblox
- Rocket League
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Units Sold:
- Arc Raiders
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Battlefield 6
- Borderlands 4
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- EA Sports Madden NFL 26
- EA Sports College Football 26
- EA Sports FC 26
- Elden Ring Nightreign
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Helldivers 2
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- MLB The Show 25
- Monster Hunter Wilds
- NBA 2K26
- PGA Tour 2K25
- Ready or Not
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
- WWE 2K25
