Xbox Announces Excellence Awards Winners, Including 20 Of The Best-Selling Games

For the second year in a row, we've been treated to the Xbox Excellence Awards today — a celebration that aims to highlight the games fans "loved most" in the previous year, with trophies being sent to the developers and publishers who created them.

"2025 was an incredible year for gaming and, before we run full-tilt into 2026, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the titles that Xbox players made a part of their year, across all devices – from console, to PC, to handheld, to cloud. Today, we’re announcing the recipients of the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards."

Just like last year, the Xbox Excellence Awards have been determined based on four categories:

  • Store Rating: "The highest-rated content across our stores released in 2025, with a minimum of 500 ratings."
  • Player Engagement: "The games with the highest average hours per-player within the first six weeks of release."
  • Daily Active Users: "Games, expansions, or major updates with the highest single-day active users in 2025. You may notice games that weren’t released in 2025 in this list – that’s because they got a significant update last year."
  • Units Sold: "Top-selling content across Xbox and Microsoft stores."

This year, we've got 55 games in the list (16 of which are Xbox Game Pass titles), made up of "48 unique developers hailing from 13 countries", and 19 of the games are self-published.

So, let's take a look at the winners for 2025! We'll start with "Store Rating" and finish with "Units Sold".

Here's the full list of winners for the Xbox Excellence Awards 2025:

Xbox Excellence Awards 2025: Store Rating

Xbox Announces Excellence Awards Winners, Including 20 Of The Best-Selling Games 1

Xbox Excellence Awards 2025: Player Engagement

Xbox Announces Excellence Awards Winners, Including 20 Of The Best-Selling Games 2

Xbox Excellence Awards 2025: Daily Active Users

Xbox Announces Excellence Awards Winners, Including 20 Of The Best-Selling Games 3

Xbox Excellence Awards 2025: Units Sold

Xbox Announces Excellence Awards Winners, Including 20 Of The Best-Selling Games 4

How many Xbox Excellence Awards 2025 winners have you played? Let us know in the comments below.

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