15 First-Party Games Released On Xbox In 2025, But Which Was Your Favourite?

Outworlds 2 and Doom have to top it for me.
With special mentions to Avowed and NG4

SoM but haven't played keeper yet and I think that would top it. Wonderfully creative output this year

Let's go fellow South of Midnight fans ❤️

That is an impressive list of games for one year. I went with Avowed but it could have easily been doom, outer worlds 2 or grounded 2.

Avowed closely followed by South of Midnight. Outer Worlds 2 is also pretty good from what I've played so far.

0 exclusives. I didn’t even know Tony Hawk and Ninja Gaiden flopped.

Did any game on here break 20k players?

I have played 4 of the games on the list, and so my order would be:

1. The Outer Worlds 2
2. DOOM: The Dark Ages
3. Gears of War: Reloaded
4. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

Still annoyed that I played the entirety of The Outer Worlds 2 on the Very Hard difficulty, and yet the achievement for doing so did not pop, but I did love the game.

I loved DOOM: The Dark Ages too, and if I could put it at joint top, I would, but obviously that is not an option. I felt it was far better than Doom: Eternal, simply because I was not a fan of the movement in that game.

When it comes to Gears of War: Reloaded, I enjoyed going back through the game and obtaining all the achievements for the campaign, but goodness me it was a poor effort (and I use the term effort very loosely!). The friendly AI was atrocious, and it really looked and played no differently to the Ultimate Edition.

Lastly Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 was not as good as the first game, in my opinion, however, the visuals and vistas were stunning.

My plan for 2026 is to try and get round to playing Avowed and South of Midnight, but honestly, despite being retired, I still find it difficult to get round to everything that I want to play, thus there is every chance that I will never get to play these games. Still, it was a decent year for Xbox games, but not stellar. I'd probably give them 8 out of 10, and a Could Do Better review... 😉

South of Midnight. My hopes were high and it still delivered.

Mine would have been oblivion if it weren’t a flat out broken pile of stuttery, janky, bug filled glitch riddled rubbish. So my vote went to THPS 3+4, which somewhat surprisingly came out nearly flawless (once the awful Xbox controller was swapped for the one the series was built around). I doff my cap to those guys, they even went the extra mile and cleaned up the achievement list compared to Vicarious Visions’ tedious, grueling list for 1+2. There are some combo challenges that pose a significant difficulty spike for new players, but for veterans from the PS1/PS2 days it’s smooth sailing. Fantastic collection of games all around!

I voted for South of Midnight out of the following games that I played: South of Midnight, Gears of War: Reloaded, Keeper, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4, Xbox Retro Classics.

Keeper was cool, but I need more substance. I found it to just be cool art. Gears and TH are great! But I can't vote for remakes.

I know I'd love Outer Worlds 2, Avowed, and The Elder Scrolls; but unfortunately those games take me forever and I played Fallout 4 and Outer Worlds within the last 12 months. Sometimes I need breaks in-between large games. I plan to play them. When I do, I'll love them.

South Of Midnight is an amazing game, Glad it's leading the poll..

I wouldn't rate any of the Xbox games I played from this year over a 7 but doom dark ages is my favorite I guess