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

Console players are getting the full co-op loop, online for up to four, plus PS5 Pro Enhanced support, and the standard DualSense vibration perks. Pricing is set at $39.99 for both versions.

If you’ve only watched the PC megabases from afar, the pitch remains delightfully simple: explore an alien world, mine it dry, and scale your production chains higher and higher in service of FICSIT’s space elevator.

Crucially, the console versions aren’t a “lite” edition, they’re built to preserve Satisfactory’s sandbox sprawl and share the same core systems that make its mid-to-late game so absorbing. That includes the pain-and-pleasure of optimizing layouts, balancing bottlenecks, and re-architecting entire facilities when a single new material throws your ratios off. For a genre that usually lives at a desk, having that loop on the big screen (with gamepad in hand) is the appeal.

Bottom line: Satisfactory on PS5 and Series X|S turns a legendary PC time sink into a living-room ritual. If performance holds and pad controls feel right, it could be your next timesink.

Satisfactory belongs to the same genre as titles like shapez and Factorio, the biggest difference being that it’s in first-person. As a FICSIT employee, you arrive on an uncolonized world and set about establishing factories, production lines, and much more to construct a space elevator.

There’s a lot of building and crafting involved, but optimizing those production lines, researching new technologies, discovering new materials, and exploring the planet make up the true appeal. It’s a lengthy adventure spanning over 100 hours (which doesn’t include the side content) – check out our review, where we gave it a nine out of ten, to learn more.

For more details on the latest update for PC, which added controller support, a revamped Photo Mode, and much more, head here.

This starter guide has all the critical information players need as they begin their journey into Satisfactory’s gameplay loop, from free starting materials, to fast map traversal.

Do Not Skip Intro

If you are a new player, or even one returning after a long break, it is highly recommended that you do NOT check the box ‘Skip Intro’, as it helps guide you along fundamental gameplay concepts. As an open-world sandbox game, it can be easy to get distracted and miss the importance of certain mechanics that are mentioned in the early game.

Do Not Enable Advanced Game Settings

The primary reason for not making use of Advanced Game Settings is that it prevents the completion of Achievements. It is the equivalent of ‘Creative Mode’ in similar games in the simulation and survival genres. While this can be activated during a session playthrough, it becomes a point of no return, and the only way to return to the default game mode is to revert to saves created before the switch.

Drop Pod Free Materials

Every starting location has a drop pod with a varying number of Reinforced Iron Plates contained within. These will come in very handy for skipping through some construction phases that yield Reinforced Plates the hard way. The drop pods are usually located in the vicinity of the initial landing location.

Peaceful Mode

As you begin exploring the map and collecting resources towards the completion of your objectives, you will encounter hostile alien creatures that will attack you by default. If you prefer a relatively serene experience, you can navigate to the Pause menu, then Options -> Gameplay -> Creature Hostility at the very top, and select Passive from the drop-down menu. You can also opt for Retaliate, which will cause creatures to only attack you if you initiate combat.

Key And Button Prompts

Most world actions have a set of key and button prompts allowing you to do everything from rotating buildings for perfect placement, to automating crafting at the Bench. These prompts can be easy to miss since they are displayed at the very bottom of the screen, outside the focus of the menu you may be viewing.

Hotbar Customization

Almost any menu function can be bound to a key in the hotbar. Simply mouse over the menu button, such as Power Line, and press a hotbar key (default ‘1’ through ‘0’) to bind it. To use that particular function, simply press the associated key, saving you the trouble of navigating through multiple menus.

HUB Placement

Once you have gathered your first Iron ore, you will be ready to start putting down roots with the construction of a HUB. While it can be moved later on, an ideal start would see you place it as close as possible to an Iron Node, or between multiple clusters of them if applicable, for maximum efficiency.

Resource Storage

Remember that the HUB contains a Personal Storage Box for all the pickups that you have been gathering by hand. If you are running out of inventory space, offload it here as often as possible.

Moving Stacks

As a heavily menu-based game, Satisfactory will have you moving resources around between sections. Rather than laboriously dragging and dropping, use Double Left Click or Shift + Left Click to move entire stacks of items directly into the relevant slot, for example, a large quantity of ore into the Smelter for the production of ingots.

Node Purity

The rate of ore mining is determined by the purity rating of the Node, which you can plainly see as a tooltip when looking at the ore site. Impure is the slowest, followed by Normal, and lastly Pure. One way to mitigate slow ore production is to produce and place multiple Portable Miners atop the same ore deposit.

Flashlight

Night will fall upon your base, well before you can establish a power grid and base lighting. Use your flashlight (default ‘B’) to be able to see in the darkness until you can put up some power lines.

Snap Mode

While you will initially be manually portering resources between production buildings, eventually you will want to construct Conveyor Belts between them to automate production. Aligning the buildings correctly during construction can simplify the process. Use the Snap Mode function (default: Left Ctrl) to get immediate visual feedback from the building hologram: rotate the building until it displays a green and orange dashed line connecting it to the output structure.

Rapid Biomass Collection

Before you can truly automate ore refining and production, you will have to construct the relevant buildings, all of which require power from the Biomass Generator. That in turn requires the laborious collection of biomass of the ground by hand. As you scour the map for leaves and wood, hold the collect key (default ‘E’) while the prompt is active, and from that point you can simply scoop up fuel while you run around. This method will spare you the need to manually focus and tap the key on every leaf and bit of wood you find.

Power Poles

The singular Biomass Generator that initially comes with your HUB can only support one powered structure at a time. While you could viably detach and attach the power cable between multiple buildings, you are better off constructing a Power Pole which has four distribution points for your use. You will be obliged to reserve at least one of those four to connect another Power Pole as you extend your power grid.

Second Biomass Generator

Once you have reached Hub Upgrade 5 and unlocked the second Biomass Generator, be sure to connect it to the same Power Pole as the first Biomass Generator, thus keeping your power grid efficient and always running. You may have to reorganize some of the already present connections on Power Poles in order to accommodate the connection.

Miner Placement

At this point you will have also unlocked the production of the Miner, which can be placed on ore Nodes to automate the mining that you initially performed by hand or Portable Miner. If you are puzzled about why you are unable to place Miners on some Nodes, it is because the ore heap atop it MUST be mined and demolished by hand in order to place the larger automation.

Fast Map Traversal

While you can full sprint in Satisfactory, a gameplay mechanic involving sliding and jumping is actually a much faster way to cross long distances.

Those are all the critical tips and tricks you need in the early game for Satisfactory.

I wouldn’t have gotten it had I never played Factorio (the other factory-building, automation-focused addition that’s a perfectionist’s nightmare). You could say that Factorio and Satisfactory are two sides of the same coin – play one or the other, depending on your hardware or choice of perspective. Grow the factory to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

"It may sound like a meaningless grind, but the appeal isn’t mining resources to build stuff, just to build other stuff, until the heat death of the universe. It’s in optimizing the entire process. "

However, it’s more than that. Satisfactory isn’t a mission to build a space rocket to escape from a hostile world. It’s a constantly evolving exercise in problem-solving brought to you by the lovely corporate folks at FICSIT, with a monolithic Space Elevator showcasing the various phases to aspire to, gatekeeping the higher tiers of technology. The local fauna isn’t a fan of you, but they’re not out to actively uproot you. Everything works towards optimized resource gathering, manufacturing, and transporting to The Hub. It’s basic yet brutal. Simple yet instinctive. Ever-consuming yet fulfilling. And it’s beautiful.

Satisfactory is about you, an employee of FICSIT, touching down on an alien world to harvest its resources for the company’s gain. Your HudOS offers ADA, an AI assistant to somewhat guide you through the process, providing updates on new materials and unlocked tiers but mostly providing snarky comments. Sometimes, a strange corruption overtakes her, hinting at something greater. Maybe it’s a bug.

While the narrative isn’t super heavy-handed, there are some interesting bits here and there, like the state of Earth. Maybe it’s all lies told by ADA to motivate you towards FICSIT’s goals, whatever they may be. Regardless, none of this gets in the way of the core gameplay loop.

How do you go about harvesting all these resources? With machines, of course. Drills to extract ore. Smelters to refine them into ingots. Constructors for automatically crafting them into plates, rods, sheets, wires, etc. Refining said items to make Screws, Reinforced Iron Plates, and Cables. Combine items to make Rotors, Smart Plating, and Modular Frames. And so on. And so forth.

It may sound like a meaningless grind, but the appeal isn’t mining resources to build stuff, just to build other stuff, until the heat death of the universe. It’s in optimizing the entire process. You could spend the day standing at your crafting bench and hammering out all the materials (though some project items can’t be constructed through this method). However, it’s faster and more practical to figure out ways to automate and run it in the background.

"There are many occasions where order is thrown to the wind – it doesn’t matter where goes what, so long as you can build the next thing."

Does a Constructor produce an excess amount of Screws? A Conveyor Splitter to send some to another machine and build something else. The Screws aren’t enough to keep up with the produced Ingots? Two Constructors feed into a Conveyor Merger, then a Conveyor Splitter, one on top of the other, connected through a Conveyor lift. While you could criticize the lack of terrain editing, it’s central to the problem-solving appeal.

Take the pipe problem from earlier. After reaching Tier 3 and unlocking the Coal Generator, I could mine the resource and build Water Extractors. Combine the two to produce steam, providing more electricity to power my machinations. The challenge is in transporting both materials. I started with the water and found a lake not too far from The Hub with an ample supply. The problem is that it’s overlooked by cliffs.

Thus began an exercise in frustration (the good kind, I swear this isn’t unhealthy) and curiosity, figuring out how to maneuver the pipes and construct pumps to transport it up the cliffside. Optimization is important here because the water flow starts dropping with longer pipe distances. Maybe I could build Fluid Buffers along the way, storing the water more efficiently before sending it further without a water flow loss. I don’t know if that would, and that’s the best part.

There are many occasions where order is thrown to the wind – it doesn’t matter where goes what, so long as you can build the next thing. Each new tier and goal, from unlocking faster conveyor belts and the chainsaw to building 50 Smart Plating for the Space Elevator’s first phase, is a push to go even further.

When the factory turned into a massive regretti spaghetti, I promised to change. I saw the appeal of Foundations, especially given the different kinds of environmental elevations. Everything would be organized (or organized better). I would be better. Then, I chased after the next milestone because the thought of a Tractor that I could automate was appealing.

"I also appreciated how organic the actual factory aspect is. You’re not feeding fuel into a Biomass Burner, but also manually flipping the switch to turn it on."

After 20 hours in two days, all of this barely scratches the surface of what Satisfactory has to offer. There’s an entire exploration aspect, where you venture across the planet and battle hostile creatures or discover Power Slugs and new materials. Alien materials can be placed into the MAM for research and unlocking further resources like Bio-Organic Materials and even new weapons and inventory slots. Constructing more tools and faster transportation methods facilitates further exploration.

Maybe you’ll discover other ore nodes and think about how to mine and transport them back to The Hub. Another new problem with some exciting solutions, which you won’t be satisfied with until it’s fully optimized. The presence of multiple environments, each with unique challenges, also helps with the replay value.

Obviously, this can get a little overwhelming, especially when keeping track of all the different materials. Coffee Stain Studios does well at streamlining, whether it’s the minimalist interface or the Codex and the ability to search for whatever you need. Buildings and structures can be easily hotkeyed, scanning for resources is straightforward, and the map offers multiple ways to mark important points and regions.

I also appreciated how organic the actual factory aspect is. You’re not feeding fuel into a Biomass Burner, but also manually flipping the switch to turn it on. Milestone completion results in pressing a big red button for space launch before the unlocks pour in. The Space Elevator hums to life when completing a phase. All of this improves immersion, further aided by the gorgeous visuals.

"Even if its ambitious scale can occasionally cause issues, Satisfactory demands – and earns – every bit of your time, and then some."

From dusk and dawn to skyboxes with galaxies and other planets, not to mention the sheer expanse of the flora or the realistic water, everything about Satisfactory is gorgeous, right down to the nuanced animations of machines. The soundtrack works quite well, remaining understated but adding to the atmosphere.

The only downside is the bugs and crashes, though both are fairly minimal. One bug prevented me from adding buildings to hotkeys while another caused some odd clipping issues with the water. I experienced two crashes, the first ironically from launching the game. Nevertheless, the overall level of polish considering the sheer size and scale of the endeavor.

For years, I’ve had Satisfactory on my radar because I enjoyed Coffee Stain’s Sanctum series. The sheer effort and attention to detail that’s gone into the experience is incredible. The gameplay loop remains addictive and endearing, with each new unlock encouraging you to approach, revamp, and expand your factory further. Even if its ambitious scale can occasionally cause issues, Satisfactory demands – and earns – every bit of your time, and then some.

This game was reviewed on PC.

In a new Steam Community post, the development team outlined several other changes and new content with version 1.0, including removing, adding and altering resource nodes on the world map. Recipe costs have also seen changes to “promote smoother transitions between phases and tiers, especially later in the game.”

You can now progress through Tiers 5 and 6 without Heavy Modular Frames and Computers (thus unlocking Trains). However, the former is “more relaxed” due to fewer Encased Industrial Beams, and the latter doesn’t need Screws. Furthermore, Supercomputers won’t be required to make Programmable Splitters or Geothermal Generators – they’ll use AI Limiters and Highspeed Connectors instead.

As for game optimization, Coffee Stain has confirmed an update to Unreal Engine 5.3, with optimizations to level streaming, shadow rendering, DLSS/FSR and so on. Vehicles won’t destroy Foliage upon driving through to assist in optimization, while computations for belts and pipes will now occur in clusters rather than individually.

There’s still a lot more details to come, so stay tuned in the coming weeks.

In a new video titled The Satisfactory Roadmap to 1.0, the studio talks about some of the planned content coming to the game in updates throughout the year. The timeline presented in the video indicates that 2024 will see Satisfactory getting at least 2 major updates, with at least one update planned for 2025.

The first of these updates, titled Update 9: Experimental War, will bring a more serious tone to Satisfactory. The studio describes the update as allowing players to go to war on the efficiency of their factories. The update will also allow players to add guns to everything, from factories to vehicles. Update 9 is slated for a May 2024 release.

Following that will be Update X, which will kick off the studio’s endgame in getting Satisfactory out of its early access phase. The update will make vehicles faster, and will allow players to romance different creatures in the game. Update X is slated for a December 2024 release.

The first update of 2025, titled Update 11, will bring lasers to Satisfactory. Players will be able to automate and construct new laser beams, and there will also be a new cooking system introduced to the game. Update 11 is set for an April 2025 release.

The studio states that there aren’t more updates planned for the game beyond Update 11 aside from its impending exit from early access, with hopes of finishing development of the game in 2024. There is no proper release date for the game, however, but there are plans on releasing the 1.0 update before the end of 2024.

In an announcement post on Steam, the developer has revealed the release window for the next Season to be March or April of 2022. In addition to this, Ghost Ship Games has also confirmed that the upcoming Season will be less ambitious than the first, and as such will have a rapid development cycle as opposed to the 7-month long development cycle of Season 1. That said, you can still expect it to be pretty packed.

“We expect Season 02 to go live sometime between March and April 2022 – first on Steam, and then a few weeks later for both Xbox and PlayStation,” the developer wrote. “Season 01 exceeded all our expectations and catapulted the player numbers into space. But it was also a very big update, taking almost 7 months to produce and prepare. Season 02 will be a bit less ambitious and will come out faster. Not to say, that won’t still be an impressive update with all the bells and whistles, of course!”

Deep Rock Galactic has sold over 3 million units, and is available to download right now on PC and Xbox platforms. The game will be coming to PlayStation platforms as well in January 2022, although it will not have cross-platform play support at launch.

The publisher also reveals that earlier this month, Deep Rock Galactic broke its concurrent player count record with over 40,000 players, while it also surpassed its daily active user peak on November 7, attracting over 233,000 players. In total, all players have collectively played the game for over 125 million hours.

Deep Rock Galactic will continue to move forward with a free seasonal content model in an effort to appeal to both newer and long-time players. It’s also been revealed that over 1.4 million DLCs for the game have been sold, which is impressive, considering the base game’s sales. Developer Ghost Ship Games was also recently acquired by Embracer Group.

“The way Ghost Ship Games operates is remarkable. It has been an uninterrupted pleasure joining them on this journey so far, and by all accounts we’re nowhere near done,” said Albert Säfström, CEO of Coffee Stain Publishing. “The shift to seasons seems to have resonated with our players, and the newly expanded community has so much more to look forward to.”

“When we launched into Early Access at the start of 2018, we wouldn’t have suspected that we’d be reaching new peak CCUs and sales milestones at the end of 2021!” Said Søren Lundgaard, CEO and co-founder of Ghost Ship Games. “We’ve always developed Deep Rock Galactic alongside our community, and the new Performance Pass was squarely aimed at giving them more ways to play, for a longer period of time, so we’re delighted this has also resulted in such a major milestone for us.”

Deep Rock Galcctic’s Season 01 is already out on PC, and will also be coming to Xbox One on 18th November.

If you love factory-building titles and Factorio just isn’t doing it for you, then perhaps Coffee Stain Studios’ Satisfactory is the way to go. Having launched into early access in March 2019, the first person title sold over 500,000 copies in just a few months. The development team has been hard at work on the next update, which arrives on the Experimental branch sometime in early March.

Update 4 will add Tier 8, which means a number of new parts like packaged sulfuric acid, Aluminum casing and Plutonium Waste. New parts for project assembly like the Magnetic Field Generator and Assembly Director System can also be expected. Tier 7 will receive some balance changes as well when the update arrives, including a change to Nuclear Power’s production chain (via the new Blender building).

Nitrogen gas is also coming along with Resource Well Pressurizers and Resource Well Extractors. Last but not least is a new method of traversal, which seems to be a zipline for quickly traveling across the map. Check it out below along with the other upcoming new features.