Xbox Excellence Awards Take A Different Approach To Celebrate Developers

By George Yang on January 24, 2025 at 11:32AM PST

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Xbox has introduced the Xbox Excellence Awards, which picks its winners based on how players engaged with Xbox games over the past year. It has four different categories, and they're much different than the typical ones we've seen like "Game of the Year" or "Best RPG." The four categories are Store Rating, Player Engagement, Daily Active Users, and Units Sold.

For Store Rating, it measures the highest-rated content across all of Microsoft and Xbox's stores in 2024, provided the games have a minimum of 500 ratings each. Player Engagement measures games with he highest average hours per player within the first six weeks of release. Daily Active Users measures games, expansions, and major updates with the highest single active user count in 2024. This particular category can also include games that weren't released in 2024.

Lastly, Units Sold simply refers to the top-selling content across Microsoft and Xbox stores. The list also doesn't order them in terms of quantity or numerically like a "top-downloaded games" list, but rather alphabetically.

As for Xbox this upcoming year, Xbox Games Studios is starting off strong during the first half of 2025. Avowed launches on February 18, followed by South of Midnight on April 8, and then Doom: The Dark Ages on May 15. As for third-party support, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Ninja Gaiden 4 are set to release on April 24 and in Fall 2025, respectively, with both games launching day-one on Game Pass.