2025 is the gaming year Microsoft long promised its players

Whether it's sustainable is a big question.

For many years, the leaders of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division have promised fans that they will finally end the platform’s occasional software droughts and deliver a steady cadence of major games.

In 2019, for example, Matt Booty, then head of Xbox Game Studios, told IGN that “[w]e’d love to be feeding a high quality game into Game Pass about every three months.”

In 2023, Booty, as head of games at Microsoft, told The Fourth Curtain podcast that the company had a “goal” of a “big game, a new release… something significant, going out four times a year.” He added: “It feels like we’re getting there.”

This year, they’ve done it.

By the end of 2025, Microsoft’s army of game studios—including two large groups of teams acquired in the past half-decade—will have collectively released the biggest slate of games in Xbox history.

That big slate includes major releases in winter (Avowed), spring (Doom: The Dark Ages), summer (Gears of War: Reloaded) and fall (The Outer Worlds 2).

It includes smaller, more experimental games (South of Midnight, Keeper) and blockbusters (Call of Duty: Black Ops 7).

It also includes elaborate premium-priced remakes (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered) and polished old-school compilations (Retro Classics).

The output has delivered a load of new Microsoft-published games to subscribers of the highest tier of its Game Pass subscription service.

And, as the chart¹ atop this article shows, Microsoft’s video game output in 2025 has picked up in a way that’s commensurate with the recent, rapid expansion of its network of development studios. Microsoft bought game studios in recent years; those studios are now releasing games.

There are caveats to this and questions about whether Microsoft’s pace is sustainable. 2025 was a big year for Microsoft game releases, but also an alarming one for Microsoft, with widely reported layoffs, a studio closure, cancelled projects and price hikes.

Microsoft is, at least for now, one of the most prolific game publishers in the industry. A closer look helps reveal what kind of publisher the company has been and where its priorities lie.

To me, four things stand out.