Opinion: XBLA Was Amazing, But Xbox's Indie Program Is Better Than Ever Right Now
Image: Mixtape

If you were an Xbox fan in the Xbox 360 era, you'll almost certainly remember the Xbox Live Arcade program (and indeed the Xbox Live Indie Games program), which allowed creators of a smaller size to bring their games to the platform digitally, and gave us some of the most popular titles of the generation like Minecraft and The Walking Dead.

Xbox Live Arcade (often referred to as XBLA) is remembered fondly as a result, but we'd argue that ID@Xbox — the current indie program on Xbox One, Series X, Series S and PC — is going through its best period ever right now.

You only need to look at Metacritic's best Xbox games of 2025 list, which includes multiple ID@Xbox titles in the top 25, many of which were "day one" releases on Xbox Game Pass as well. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Blue Prince, Mullet MadJack and The Alters were all Game Pass titles while being some of the highest-rated Xbox games of last year, and those are just the tip of the iceberg!

If we even just look at 2026 so far, it's been a fantastic start for Xbox indie games. The likes of MIO: Memories in Orbit, BlazBlue Entropy Effect X, Roadside Research, Starsand Island, TCG: Card Shop Simulator, Minishoot' Adventures, Planet of Lana 2, Absolum, Easy Delivery Co., Super Meat Boy 3D, Hades 2, Replaced, Vampire Crawlers, Aphelion and Mixtape have all either released or are about to release on Xbox Game Pass.

And then if we glance beyond Game Pass, it's just ridiculous how many great Xbox indie games are coming out (and often going under the radar) on a monthly basis. We do monthly roundups of these where we highlight 10 indie titles that look the most interesting to us, but based on the April one, we're going to have to extend it to 20 soon!

Again, there are so many intriguing non-Game Pass titles that we could mention from 2026 alone, including the likes of Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, Escape from Ever After, Beyond Words, The Coin Game, ICARUS: Console Edition, Scott Pilgrim EX, Romeo Is A Dead Man... the list goes on and on.

The only issue here is that there might be too many great games coming out as part of the ID@Xbox program right now. It doesn't matter so much when they're on Game Pass, but for everything else, there's more competition than ever in the marketplace. It's the same situation on other storefronts, of course, and we've heard positive things about how the Xbox Store has helped with discoverability for indies, but we still hope the likes of Escape from Ever After (and one of my favourite Xbox games of 2025, despelote) are getting the kind of sales that are making them a success on Xbox.

In any case, we really feel that Xbox's indie program is better than ever for consumers right now in 2026, and we can't wait to check out all the other amazing ID@Xbox titles set to arrive later this year. It's amazing that so many of them support Xbox Play Anywhere these days as well, allowing us to enjoy them across both console and PC!

That said, how do you feel about Xbox indies? Let us know down in the comments section below.