Xbox & Microsoft Dominate The List Of 'Most Covered' Gaming Companies In 2025

What would be really interesting, @FraserG, (and likely impossible to do!) would be to know how the articles stack up with regard to whether they are positive or negative, because I think an awful lot of what has been written about regarding Xbox / Microsoft this year will have been negative.

We've seen many articles, here and elsewhere, that would likely be considered critical of decisions that Microsoft have made regarding such things as console price increases, game price increases (and then the subsequent climbdown), and of course Game Pass increases. We've also seen many articles covering the porting of one time Xbox exclusives, which could be seen from either perspective. I know that Xbox centric websites do tend to try to put a positive spin on some of these events, but when Microsoft are behaving as they are, even the most ardent of supporters can find difficulty in doing so.

That said, I do think that Sony have had some troubles this year, as have Nintendo, but I think it fair to say that if all the negative articles were to be tallied up, that Microsoft would be leading the way by some considerable margin...

All we can hope for is that 2026 is a better year on the positive news front, @FraserG. I imagine that is a double-edged sword for a website such as Pure Xbox because it seems to me that articles that convey negative news tend to receive more comments. However, it maybe that yourselves are in a better position to know whether that is the case of not as you can actually see the traffic that each article receives, and it just might be that people are more likely to comment on negative leaning articles, whereas more positive articles might be read more, but be commented on less...

I'm not surprised. The press is a business these days; it needs traffic and clicks, and few things generate more traffic than Xbox sudden and controversial moves.

What's more, following the purchase of Activision, Xbox releases 8-10 games a year, almost triple the number of games released by PlayStation. If you want to write about the big releases each month, you can't avoid mentioning Xbox.

Hopefully 2026 will be better because the 2025 coverage wasn’t positive for the most part for Xbox as a brand and its future.

That said the lack of sale for the console around Christmas and Black Friday and the lack of investment for the player with the year in review leads me to believe that MS more or less see the Series S/X generation as over and kind of give up on them / write them off.

So unless they have big announcements of new hardware and release in 2026 I expect the current tone (at least perceived on my end) to continue or just to disappears.

@Fiendish-Beaver I'm not agreeing with you. Once again, you're trying to influence people with your biased view of things. Xbox was simply the number one video game publisher, the one that developed the most games, so it's only logical that they ended up in first place. It's for the same reason that Activision/Blizzard had less coverage this year: their gaming output was weaker than in 2024.

Objectively, Xbox had a very good year in 2025, with lots of games (as indicated by @Gabrie) , many day-one releases on Game Pass like Ninja Gaiden 4, a solid Xbox Showcase, they even won two awards at the latest Game Awards, xbox rog ally, the next xbox console, etc. In fact, the main negative impact was the Game Pass price increase, and yes, that also contributed to the higher number of articles. You can also add the cancellation of Perfect Dark, but that only accounts for a few articles on GamesIndustry.biz..

But over the whole year 2025, that’s far from being the majority of the coverage. The reality is that Xbox produces games, and therefore provides material for articles. You can also add the release of the Xbox ROG Ally, which was very well received, and the Xbox Full Experience, also well received, the next Xbox, which I think generated a very large number of articles, etc.

So yes, I also think it would have been interesting to see the breakdown of positive, negative, or neutral articles, but I'm convinced that in reality the majority of them are simply neutral.

It’s true that some influencers like to play with misinformation and use clickbait about Xbox (“Xbox tax”), but overall the more serious media outlets, like GamesIndustry.biz or even PureXbox ( @FraserG ), generally take a neutral stance.