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Xbox admittedly hasn’t had a noteworthy 2022 when it comes to first-party releases, but Microsoft’s gaming hardware more than made up for its minimal selection of Xbox-published exclusives by being one of the best platforms for third-party games. Combined with its main event Game Pass subscription program and day one releases through it, Xbox had plenty of gaming muscle to flex throughout 2022.
On the exclusives side, Xbox’s big releases this year comprised of an excellent expansion for Forza Horizon 5, the full release of Grounded, and captivating Pentiment. Focused more on quality over quantity ahead of 2023’s big releases in the form of Redfall and Starfield, Xbox gamers filled the gap between console-exclusive releases with a selection of excellent third-party games.
Game Pass provided excellent material such as Persona 5 Royal, Deathloop, and A Plague Tale: Requiem, while the current-gen side of the equation saw Gotham Knights and Marvel’s Midnight Suns arrive on Microsoft’s pair of powerful consoles.
So which games earned critical acclaim this year through that platform? We’ve crunched the numbers from Metacritic, GameSpot’s sister site, to see which titles were earning rave reviews, high numbers, and plenty of praise, with the list below being a combination of both Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S titles.
