We already know the list of nominees for the award GOTY 2025as well as the other categories in this edition of The game prizesheading back to December 11th at the Peacock Theatre.
The 6 games that will compete for the Best Game of the Year award are: Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
I mean, that PlayStation has 1 GOTY nomination, Same case as Nintendobut Xbox returns to zero for the fifteenth consecutive time.
Games published by Microsoft such as Ninja Gaiden 4, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed, South of Midnight or The Outer Worlds 2 are nominated in several categories, but no one made it to the finalists for the GOTY award.
It’s a situation that has been repeated for 15 years, which means that no exclusive Xbox game (unpublished, mind you) has been among the nominees since The Game Awards existed as such.
Yes, Psychonauts 2 managed to get into the nominees in 2021 (DOOM Eternal also managed it in 2020), but the game Double Fine was not exclusive to Xboxas it was released at the same time on PS4.
The latest exclusive Xbox game nominated for ”GOTY”
Since the creation of The Game Awards in 2014, PlayStation has accumulated three GOTY awards (for God of War, The Last of Us Part II and Astro Bot), while Nintendo won the award for Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017.
Regarding nominated and non-awarded games, Sony has a total of 14 nominationsand nintendo 10while Xbox only has one…which becomes null if we only count exclusive games.
The last Xbox exclusive title nominated for GOTY was Halo: Reach at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awardsand since then it has not been repeated.
Curiously, That year the Xbox 360 had two exclusive games among the nomineesas Mass Effect 2 had not been released for PS3 at that time, even though the RPG was published by EA and not Xbox.
None of them received the award, as this honor belongs to the first Red Dead Redemption, which will soon be released on current consoles and cell phones along with Undead Nightmare.
However, we must remember ”strange” cases (at least), such as the absence of Forza Horizon 5 among the nominees for The Game Awards 2021, as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circlewhat was left out of the nominees for 2024 (by date) and 2025.
We also did not find Xbox representatives in the Most Anticipated Game category, even with titles of the caliber of Halo: Campaign Evolved, Fable, Forza Horizon 6 or Gears of War: E-Day until 2026.
Will The Game Awards 2026 be the year of redemption for Xbox? Frankly, it has a lot of potential to be there, although 2025 was also full of Xbox releases… but no GOTY nominations.
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