Even if you’re not close enough to the games industry to need to know who-owns-who, if you are an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, it can give you an idea of what will be coming in the future - especially with Microsoft’s commitment to put everything it makes from its first-party studios onto the subscription service - as well as what’s playable now through Xbox backwards compatibility. With the likes of Halo, Forza, Minecraft, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Doom - and soon Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Crash Bandicoot - there’s an awful lot of games now under the Xbox Studios umbrella. This page offers a complete Xbox Game Studios list, the headline games they have worked on, and upcoming Xbox studios games worth knowing. If you are interested in Xbox Cloud Gaming in particular, our colleagues at Jelly Deals have recommendations for the best Xbox Cloud Gaming phones and tablets and best Xbox Cloud Gaming controllers. Best known for: Everything Halo post-Bungie, including Halo Infinite (2021) and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014). Upcoming games: Halo Infinite will continue to see updates for the forseeable - with 2021 seeing co-op and likely a form of campaign level select. Best known for: Call of Duty, Spyro, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot and Tony Hawk from Activision, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Hearthstone and StarCraft from Blizzard, as well as Candy Crush from mobile arm King. Activision and Blizzard have many other games in its back catalogue, including but not limited to: Geometry Wars, King’s Quest, Pitfall, Space Quest, Skylanders, True Crime, Bullet Witch Saga, Blur, Singularity, Prototype, Vigilante 8, Interstate ‘76, Soldier of Fortune, Zork, and licensed games for the likes of X-Men, Star Trek, James Bond and Shrek. Upcoming games: Activision has effectively thrown all its weight behind Call of Duty in recent years - so expect more annual instalments (2022 is the turn of Modern Warfare 2) and on-going support for Warzone. From the Blizzard side of things, World of Warcraft continues to be popular, and the likes of Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 are still to come - though both have been delayed to 2023. As for what all this means under Microsoft’s stewardship, we’ll have to wait and see. Best known for: Since it was founded in 2012, releases include Wraithborne, MonstroCity: Rampage and a free-to-play remake of Atari 7800 game Ninja Golf. Its most recent release was Mighty Doom, a top-down shooter “set in the animated Doom universe”. Upcoming games: TBC. Best known for: Arx Fatalis (2002), Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006) and more recently, Dishonored and Prey. Deathloop, a PS5 console timed exclusive, was released in 2020. We gave it an Essential in our Deathloop review. Upcoming games: Redfall, an open-world, co-op vampire shooter announced at E3 2021. It’s set to be released in summer 2022. Best known for: As well as mainline The Elder Scrolls and Fallout entries, Bethesda Game Studios has been busy with various spin-offs in recent years - including Fallout Shelter, The Elder Scrolls: Blades on mobile, and Fallout and The Elder Scrolls in VR. Upcoming games: Starfield, its first new universe in 25 years, is due November 2022. Elsewhere, it’s currently working on The Elder Scrolls 6 (of which we know very little, aside from Xbox and PC exclusivity and teases of its location) and a “one-pager” for Fallout 5. Best known for: 2013 puzzle platformer Contrast, and more recently, 2018’s We Happy Few. It since saw several DLC updates, including We All Fall Down in 2019. Upcoming games: In 2021, we learned Compulsion Games is working on a new “narrative, third person, story game”, which we’ve since learned is codenamed Midnight in a later report. It will be its first release following its Microsoft acquisition. Best known for: Psychonauts (including VR entry Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin), Brutal Legend, Costume Quest, Stacking, Iron Brigade, (brilliant) Kinect title Double Fine Happy Action Theater, Hack ’n’ Slash, Spacebase DF-9, The Cave, Massive Chalice, Headlander, Broken Age and remasters of Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. Upcoming games: TBC - its most recent release, Psychonauts 2, launched in 2021. Best known for: Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom series, the Quake series (including Quake 3 Arena) and Rage. Its most recent releases were Rage 2 (2019), Quake Champions (2018) and Doom Eternal (2020). Upcoming games: TBC - Doom Eternal saw a PS5 and Xbox Series update in 2021. Best known for: The Bard’s Tale series, Line Rider 2, Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, Choplifter HD, Wasteland Remastered, Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera. Upcoming games: TBC. Inxile’s most recent releases was Wasteland 3 - launched in 2020 - and support on The Bard’s Tale: Warlocks of Largefearn, a voice-controlled spin-off for Alexa and Google Assistant devices. Best known for: Wolfenstein post-2014 (The New Order, The Old Blood, sequel The New Colossus, Youngblood and Cyberpilot). It also worked on a new episode in 2021 remaster of the original Quake, named Dimension of the Machine. Upcoming games: An “original story” in the Indiana Jones universe is currently in development in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. It has yet to be given a release date. Best known for: Minecraft, card game Caller’s Bane (originally known as Scrolls), Crown and Council, Minecraft Earth, Minecraft Dungeons. Upcoming games: Mojang continues to update Minecraft, and in late 2021, announced plans to support Minecraft Dungeons with a seasonal model and battle pass. Best known for: Kung Fu Chaos, Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, DmC: Devil May Cry, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Bleeding Edge. Upcoming games: In 2021, it was announced updates for its team-based multiplayer game Bleeding Edge would end less than a year after launch. Future projects include Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 and “experimental title” Project: Mara. Best known for: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, The Outer Worlds, Grounded. Upcoming games: Obsidian continues to update Grounded - it saw its “biggest update yet” in late 2021 with the arrival of a sandbox biome and first dungeon - and is working on The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed, a first-person role-playing game set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Best known for: Forza Horizon 1-5. Upcoming games: As well as (what we assume) will be more Forza Horizon games, Playground Games is working on a new Fable entry. Best known for: Jetpac, Lunar Jetman, R.C. Pro-Am, Sabre Wulf, Snake Rattle N Roll, Banjo Kazooie, Battletoads (including a 2020 reboot), Blast Corps, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Jet Force Gemini, Kameo: Elements of Power, Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Pinata, Banjo Kazooie. Prominent Nintendo exclusives, meanwhile, include Donkey Kong Country, Diddy Kong Racing, Starfox Adventures and GoldenEye 007. Upcoming games: Rare continues to update open-world pirate game Sea of Thieves, and is working on mysterious adventure Everwild, which is reported to be releasing in 2024. Best known for: As part of Humanhead Studios, it worked on the Rune series, The Quiet Man, 2006’s Prey and a cancelled sequel. Upcoming games: TBC. Following the founding of the studio, Bethesda said it was working on “unannounced projects”. Best known for: The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2. Upcoming games: The studio’s next project, Ghostwire: Tokyo, will launch as a PS5 console timed exclusive in early 2022. Best known for: Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Gears of War 4, Gears 5, Gears Tactics. Upcoming games: According to its website, “The Coalition is currently focused on next-generation development using Unreal Engine 5”. If we had to put money on it, that would be a new Gears of War game. Upcoming games: A reboot of Perfect Dark. Best known for: Forza Motorsport 1-7, as well as the soon-to-be-shuttered Forza Street. Upcoming games: An unnumbered, next-gen entry in the Forza Motorsport series - with 4K support at a full 60fps and ray tracing to look forward to. Best known for: State of Decay, State of Decay 2. Upcoming games: State of Decay 3, announced in 2020 as part of a large Series X showcase. Best known for: Overseeing Age of Empires in recent years - including Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition in 2020, and the Relic-developed Age of Empires 4 in 2021. Upcoming games: In January 2022, it looked like Microsoft was testing Ages of Empires 4 for Xbox consoles. And beyond that? Probably more Age of Empires games. Best known for: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Tell Me Why, Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Upcoming games: More Microsoft Flight Simulator updates - including a Top Gun expansion in May 2022 - and Contraband, a “co-op smuggler’s paradise set in the fictional world of 1970s Bayan” from Avalanche Studios. Best known for: The Elder Scrolls Online, which has seen over 19 million players since launch. Upcoming games: The Elder Scrolls Online continues to see updates - including a next-gen version for PS5 and Xbox Series, and Deadlands DLC, released November 2021.
