Xbox Has Never Been Nominated for Game of the Year.

The Game Awards are coming up quickly, with Geoff Keighley and his team hard at work for this year’s event. However, there is one prevalent failing nomination each year on the side of Xbox. The Game of the Year. With nominees being revealed, and while there are the best of the best in this category, there remains one massive red flag with Xbox standing on the sidelines.

As pointed out by Nick Marseil’s post on X, Xbox has been absent from the Game of the Year category for the past 15 years. Meanwhile, their competition clearly dominates the awards, with PlayStation having 15 titles nominated, including the likes of God of War, Spider-Man, and Astro Bot (last year’s winner) - as well as Nintendo, with 12 of their exclusives nominated for titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and this year’s Donkey Kong Bananza.

Xbox has had some great games, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hi-Fi Rush (now acquired by Krafton), among others. But fans must be scratching their heads, as much as I am, asking: What will it take for Xbox to create a masterpiece capable of receiving a Game of the Year nomination?

Next year should, though I use the term lightly - “should” have an incredible lineup for fans to explore Albion, blast their way through the Locust swarm, and race the streets of Tokyo. Will it be enough to place them among the top of critics’ minds and nominate an Xbox title for GOTY?

Games like Fable, Gears of War E-Day, Forza Horizon 6, and Halo: Combat Evolved are all currently slated to launch in 2026, although other titles from Xbox teams are still questioning their release windows. Undead Labs are currently hard at work on State of Decay 3 - first revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase in 2020, and inXile’s Clockwork Revolution has fans excited about what we’ve seen so far. But the question remains: Can they truly compete with PlayStation and Nintendo?

With Xbox’s announcement of the cancelled project Everwild, saw Gregg Mayles (Director on Everwild), who had been with Rare for nearly 35 years, and Louise O’Connor (Executive Producer on Everwild), who had also been with Rare for over 20 years, both departed after the project was disbanded. Perfect Dark would shortly after would join Everwild in being cancelled alongside them, with mass layoffs to follow.

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty confirmed in an internal memo: “We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild, as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio. As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative.”

Xbox continues to struggle and find its footing in an industry that is currently being dominated by its competitors. Another competitor to challenge Xbox is the latest announcement by Valve, with their Steam Machine coming to join the console living room space. Though Valve has yet to reveal Half-Life 3 for their Steam Machine, , one can only imagine if the game were to be announced and launched alongside Steam’s latest addition of hardware (and PC), they themselves could compete in the Game of the Year category -once again pushing Xbox to the side.

Will Xbox ever create a Game of the Year contender? Let us know your thoughts over in our Discord.