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Microsoft has shared the list of 2024’s best-selling Xbox games. As is customary for such year-end roundups, this particular list highlights Xbox gamers’ strong preference for sports titles.
In late January 2024, Microsoft introduced a new initiative called the Xbox Excellence Awards. As the name suggests, the program aims to celebrate the most outstanding Xbox games on an annual basis.
Top 20 Best-Selling Microsoft/Xbox Store Games of 2024
- 7 Days to Die
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
- Dragon’s Dogma 2
- EA Sports College Football 25
- EA Sports FC 25
- EA Sports Madden NFL 25
- Farming Simulator 25
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
- MLB The Show 24
- NBA 2K25
- NHL 25
- Palworld
- Phasmophobia
- Star Wars Outlaws
- The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
- WWE 2K24
Microsoft alphabetized the list of 2024’s best-selling games rather than sharing detailed rankings.
In terms of big-picture trends, sports games have dominated the Xbox ecosystem over the course of 2024. More than one-third of the newly shared list consists of sports titles, including MLB The Show 24, NBA 2K25, NHL 25, and WWE 2K24. Three sports games from Electronic Arts have also made the cut. Of those, EA Sports College Football 25 and EAS FC 25 ended up making the top 20 in two other categories: Player Engagement and Daily Active Users. While the latter is self-explanatory, Microsoft measures player engagement by calculating the average playing hours per user within the first six weeks of a given game’s release.
Multiple Best-Selling Xbox Games of 2024 Underperformed Commercially
The newly released list of 2024’s best-selling Xbox games features several titles that underperformed commercially, making their inclusion somewhat unexpected. Both Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet internal sales expectations, with earlier signs suggesting that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora faced similar challenges. Since all of them still sold well within the Xbox ecosystem, it’s debatable whether their perceived failures stem from unrealistic expectations, ballooning development budgets, other factors, or a combination thereof.
All the developers and publishers highlighted as part of the Xbox Excellence Awards 2024 will soon receive trophies from Microsoft. The full list of winners includes games from dozens of companies spanning 15 countries.