Xbox Game Studios saw a record breaking year in 2020

2020 might be a big ol’ lump of caca for most of us, but Xbox Game Studios has found great success in the year of disappointment, endless stupidity and all-around awfulness.

Firstly, Xbox Game Studios saw a record-breaking number of releases this year with 14 titles releasing since January. (Xbox’s press release states fifteen but Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition isn’t out until the 15th. Don’t blow that load too early, Xbox General Manager Aaron Greenberg!)  Xbox even claims there are “many more” games to come.

In play time, Microsoft revealed that just Xbox published games have seen a massive playtime of 1.66 billion hours across Xbox One consoles and PC. That’s a lot of hours.

As far as critical acclaim goes, Microsoft Flight Simulator became the highest rated PC game of the year with a Metacritic average of 92. Ori and the Will of the Wisps was the highest-rated Xbox game with an average Metacritic score of 90. Wasteland 3 also won best RPG at Gamescom!

Finally, there’s some more numbers. Obsidian Entertainment’s new survival game Grounded has already reached a player count of 1 million. On the other hand, Rare’s Sea of Thieves has cracked 15 million players.

Xbox Game Studios has seen a massive expansion of the past few years. From the smaller acquisition of Hellblade developers Ninja Theory all the way up to last month’s massive $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax Media and everything they owned, it’s been a huge couple of years for Microsoft.