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

Taking a closer look at software sales for the month of December, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 took the lead, with Battlefield 6 being ranked third. Other titles in the best-seller charts for the month are a mix of newer games like Donkey Kong Bananza and older titles like Grand Theft Auto 5, Minecraft and Red Dead Redemption 2.

While other console makers might have started struggling with console sales last year, Nintendo has been doing quite well with the release of the Switch 2. Piscatella had confirmed, the Switch 2 ended up being the best-selling console of the year in the US, with the country accounting for 4.4 million units. Along with this, the new console is also noted as selling faster than the original Switch from back in 2017.

As he noted, the Switch 2’s hardware sales single-handedly managed to offset industry-wide downward trends in console hardware sales. Sony’s PS5 ranked second for the period. The Switch 2 has also been described by Piscatella as being the “fastest selling video game console hardware platform” in history so far.

While things might be going well for Nintendo for the time being, research firm Niko Partners has predicted that the company will end up raising the price of the Switch 2 thanks to the worldwide memory shortages affecting manufacturing. The firm noted that, while the Switch 2 is priced competitively when compared to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo might have to bring its latest console in line with its competitors to maintain profitability.

In the meantime, Battlefield Studios has been working hard on creating and testing more content for the upcoming second season of Battlefield 6. While it hasn’t yet revealed too many details aside from its February 17 launch date, the developers provided a few hints about what kind of content we can expect when Season 2 of Battlefield 6 is kicked off.

Among the new content coming to the game is a brand new map, dubbed Contagion, that will also feature its own unique gameplay mechanics. No details have been provided about these mechanics, aside from vague hints about players needing to use equipment to interact with them, a soldier wearing a gas mask in the teaser trailer, and the fact that the map’s name implies some sort of contagious infection will be involved.

Battlefield 6 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review from back when it first came out.

2025 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content)

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2026-01-22T14:00:07.506Z

December 2025 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content)

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2026-01-22T14:00:07.505Z

Several new music tracks are available from the Intro and Overworld to the Nether, but you can also listen to the originals, from Comforting Memories and Infinite Amethyst to Pigstep. Coinciding with the DLC’s launch is the Minecraft Festival, a limited-time event available now till October 12th, 7:59 PM EDT.

By participating and earning Festival Points, players can earn a new title, stickers, a horn and a new Gadget for free. If you miss out, the Gadget will be available in future updates, while other rewards could become available through “other means” in the future.

The next pack releasing in Q4 2025 is SpongeBob SquarePants, so stay tuned for more details and check out the roadmap here. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch, with the Switch 2 version also out later this year. You can read our review here.

Over this last weekend, A Minecraft Movie made $41 million in the domestic box office, making $16 million on Friday and $15.8 million on Saturday. Sunday saw it make an another $9.5 million, according to the stats provided by Box Office Mojo. In totality, A Minecraft Movie has made more than $343 million in the domestic box office, and $374 million in the international box office. This totals up to more than $717 million in the worldwide box office.

Currently A Minecraft Movie is trailing behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is the highest grossing movie to be adapted from a video game franchise so far, having made $1.3 billion when it was still in theatres. Interestingly, A Minecraft Movie had beaten The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s opening box office results, having made $157 million in the domestic market, compared to The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s $146 million opening weekend.

For the sake of comparison, The Super Mario Bros. Movie ended up being the most profitable movie of 2023. The movie was able to beat out heavy hitters of the year, including Barbie, Oppenheimer, and even the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The movie was made with a total budget of around $400 million, with $100 million of the production cost being split 50-50 by Nintendo and Universal.

A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie has also been confirmed to be in the works. While not too many details have been revealed so far, the movie is being targeted for release some time in 2026. Back in October, Toad voice actor Keegan-Michael Key spoke about how the sequel will be “broader in scope” than its predecessor.

In light of A Minecraft Movie‘s success, it is likely that talks for a sequel might have begun behind the scenes. Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer has previously spoken about wanting more movies and TV shows adapted from video games in the past. In an interview, Spencer spoke about learning from the mistakes Microsoft had made when it came to the Halo TV series.

“We’re learning and growing through this process, which is giving us more confidence that we should do more,” said Spencer back in March. “We learned from doing Halo. We learned from doing Fallout. So all of these build on themselves. And obviously we’ll have a couple that miss. But what I’d say to the Xbox community that likes this work is, ‘You’re going to see more, because we’re gaining confidence and we’re learning through this.’”

In the meantime, we’ve also been seeing plenty of adaptations getting quite popular on the small screen. More recently, HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us kicked off its second season. Amazon also saw quite a bit of success for its adaptation of Fallout.

Datamining team XOXLeak has discovered that a game, internally titled Project Spicewood, has been in development for the last two years, and that it is a sequel to Minecraft Dungeons. It is worth noting that, as is the case with most rumours, this one should also be taken with a grain of salt.

According to the leak, some of the new zones in Project Spicewood will be Honeycomb Fields (with Undermill, Farm, Island, Lake, Fields and Forest as its main points of interest), Desert (with Cliff, Fortress, Mountain, Village and Icelagoon), and Forest (with Deep Dark Entrance, Outpost Entrance, Witchzone and Shady Forest). There will also be a town, which will likely be the base of operations for players.

Back in September 2023, Mojang had announced that update 1.17 would be the last bit of content made for Minecraft Dungeons, and that the development team that worked on the game would be moving on to another Minecraft-related project. This timeline seemingly matches up with XOXLeak’s post quite well, since we’re close to two years having passed since the announcement.

“As 1.17 was Minecraft Dungeons’ final update, our team has now moved on to new projects that continue to explore experiences in the Minecraft universe,” said Mojang at the time. “This means that there are no new features or content updates planned for the game. We do intend to continue bringing new experiences to the Minecraft universe and give our team the freedom to keep exploring the types of games they’re passionate about – just as they did with Dungeons.”

Since its release back in May 2020, Minecraft Dungeons had been quite popular. February 2022 saw the game’s player base rise all the way up to 15 million, and then in September 2023, Mojang had announced that more than 25 million players had experienced the dungeon crawler.

Another spinoff, Minecraft Legends, has also been quite popular. Back in April 2023, Mojang revealed that it the title had more than 3 million players since its launch. The game had seen plenty of updates, but in January 2024, Mojang had announced that the Snow vs Snouts update would be the last one the title would get.

For more details on both of the spin-off games, check out our reviews of Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends.

In the meantime, Minecraft continues to be incredibly popular. A report from October 2023 revealed that the game had surpassed 300 million copies sold since its official launch all the way back in 2011. Currently, Minecraft sits at the top of the charts for the number of copies it has sold, with GTA 5 being second with roughly 210 million copies sold, and Wii Sports being a distant third with 82.9 million copies sold.

“We know that you want new Minecraft content more often, which is why we’re changing our feature development rhythm,” the update reads. “Instead of providing one free update during the summer, as we’ve done in the past, we’ll now be releasing a number of free game drops throughout the year. These game drops will vary in size and will bring you features to explore more frequently.”

In addition to these smaller content drops coming over the course of the year, Mojang says it will, at the same time, also be “focusing on long-term initiatives to ensure we can continue to evolve Minecraft long into the future.”

Meanwhile, the company has also announced that it’s finally working on bringing a native version of Minecraft to PS5. Though the title has been natively available on Xbox Series X/S since Microsoft’s current console generation kicked off, PS5 players have continued to play the game’s PS4 version via backward compatibility.

Additionally, Mojang is also working on further multiplayer improvements for the game.

“Right now, we’re also working on bringing a native version of Minecraft to the PlayStation 5 – because Minecraft is better when friends can play together on whichever device they want,” the company writes. “Over the coming year, we’ll also be exploring ways to improve Minecraft’s multiplayer experience and make it easier to find and connect with friends.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks and months.

A date for the PS5 release is currently unknow, but the company has launched a test of the same. Those who own a PS5 and a have a PS4 version of Minecraft can preview the game. The preview version includes Realms as well as the new Tricky Trials Update, but multiplayer or the store aren’t included. As you would expect, Mojang says the goal of the preview build is to collect feedback from the community, catch bugs, and improve and polish the experience.

Currently, there’s no specific word on how long Mojang intends to test the game or when it will release for PS5 natively. Until then, players can, of course, continue to play Minecraft’s PS4 version on PS5 through backward compatibility.

Hints of a potential PS5 version of Minecraft were spotted by PlayStation Game Size—an X (formerly Twitter) account that tracks the backend and databases of the PlayStation Store. It is worth noting that neither developer Mojang nor studio owner Microsoft have made any official announcement for Minecraft on PS5.

It is also wort noting that the Xbox Series X/S version of Minecraft had popped up back in September of last year, having gotten an ESRB rating.

Minecraft is one of the most popular video games out there, and back in October 2023, had crossed the 300 million lifetime sales milestone. Spinoff titles of Minecraft have also been successful, with Minecraft Dungeons, for instance, crossing 25 million players back in September.

PS5 Version ✅ pic.twitter.com/27rvsvSF37

— PlayStation Game Size (@PlaystationSize) March 29, 2024

Also coming to PlayStation Plus next month is Minecraft Legends (for both PS5 and PS4 players), Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive’s real-time action strategy spinoff, which released nearly a year ago. The third and final game for subscribers next month will be SouthPAW Games’ 2021 roguelite action platformer, Skul: The Hero Slayer (for subscribers on all platforms).

All three games will become available for subscribers of all three PS Plus tiers on April 2, which means you have until April 1 to claim the current set of games.

While mods are hardly a new feature for Minecraft in general, Minecraft: Bedrock Edition has previously featured no support for mods, with the feature being left largely in the realm of the Java version of Minecraft.

While it is currently unknown whether add-ons brought to the Minecraft Marketplace will be monetised, Mojang has currently made a collection of add-ons available for free to all Minecraft: Bedrock Edition players. These add-ons include All the Wool, Spark Pets, Another Furniture, Spark Portals, Computers, and Hiker’s Friend.

The fact that these add-ons are referred to as free indicates that there are plans to feature more add-ons for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition in the future, albeit with price tags.