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

This is followed by the Switch Lite at 4,754,257 lifetime sales (10,503 for the week) and the Switch OLED at 1,876,296 lifetime sales (14,767 for the week). For software sales, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles debuted for the Switch and sold 90,885 physical copies, topping the charts. Mario Strikers: Battle League was in third with 32,173 units sold.

Nintendo Switch Sports also continues to perform well with 26,476 units sold for the week and a lifetime sales total of 474,257 units. For more details on software and hardware sales, check out the charts below.

Aniplex recently announced that Demon Slayer: Kimitsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles will be getting a Nintendo Switch port. The port is planned to release on June 9 in Japan and on June 10 worldwide. The Nintendo Switch version of the game will include all the characters, including the DLC characters which are released on the other platforms.

A new trailer for Demon Slayer: Kimitsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles has also been revealed, which you can check out down below.

Back in November, Demon Slayer: Kimitsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles also got a 60 FPS mode on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. You can read more on that through here.

As reported by Gematsu, the announcement was made in a Livestream to commemorate the new year by the company (which you can watch below, though it is in Japanese). The announcement was made by CyberConnect2’s CEO Hiroshi Matsuya, while also pointing out the sales for their other anime-based action games, like 2021’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles with over 1.32 million units sold, and 2016’s Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 managing to sell over 8.7 million.

Regardless, it is great to see that Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s performing well even in the current year, as the game is still a great way to experience the Dragon Ball Z saga without skimming through hundreds of episodes. The numbers are in all honestly not too shocking, as back in 2020, Bandai Namco Entertainment announced that the game had sold 2 million units worldwide. By the looks of it, fans and newcomers did warm up to the idea of an RPG set in the Dragon Ball Z universe, as the 4.5 million sales prove.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is available for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Google Stadia.

Yahaba is a demon who has eyes on both hands and can utilize his deadly arrows to great effect. His ultimate ability allows utilizing those arrows to manipulate directional forces. The other demon, Susamaru, uses a “powerful mari” to deal damage, all while maintaining distance from her enemies. 

As mentioned earlier, the patch version also adds a 60 FPS mode for owners of the game on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. There’s also a new set of online missions that players can partake in, and earn Kimetsu points to unlock new cosmetic options.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicle is available now on all major consoles (except the Switch) and PC via Steam.