Curated playlist

Xbox Series X and Series S games

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy OriginIn Stranger of Paradise, Jack's party are agents sent repeatedly from another world.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred HeroesEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes passed $500,000 on Kickstarter in just three to four hours.
Metal Gear Solid: Master CollectionKonami pulled two Metal Gear Solid games from digital stores in November 2021. Expired licenses were the reason given.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake EaterMetal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater sends a soldier into the Soviet jungle in 1964, using a game that first appeared in 2004. It is a 2025 stealth action-adventure from Konami, rebuilt from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the first…
Silent Hill 2 (2024 video game)In Silent Hill 2, a man gets a letter from his wife, who died three years earlier. He goes to Silent Hill, Maine.
Hades IIHades II arrived without warning on the 5th of May 2024, and a rival studio rearranged its calendar because of it. Evil Empire had planned to release The Rogue Prince of Persia on the 14th of May. It pushed the launch to later that month…
Red Dead RedemptionRed Dead Redemption is a 2010 Western from Rockstar San Diego, and it opens with a man who has run out of choices. In 1911, federal agents take the wife and son of a former outlaw named John Marston. The price of their freedom is his skill…
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII explains a death that fans of the 1997 game already knew.
Resident Evil RequiemResident Evil Requiem sold five million copies in its first five days, which made it the fastest-selling game in the long-running Resident Evil series. Capcom released it on the 27th of February 2026, and critics greeted it warmly. It is…
Grand Theft Auto VThree days after Grand Theft Auto V reached stores in September 2013, it had passed one billion dollars in sales. No entertainment product in history had reached that mark faster. The game came from Rockstar North and was published by…
Quake (video game)Only one developer came in to upload Quake on launch day. That was John Romero, who left id Software soon after.
Final Fantasy VJapan asked Square not to release Final Fantasy V on a school day.
Halo InfiniteHalo Infinite, the sixth mainline game in the Halo series, was first shown to the public on the 23rd of July 2020, and the response was harsh. Eurogamer wrote that it looked like "the fake plastic trees version of Halo, like a video game…
Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III's developers followed a programmer to Sacramento after his work visa expired.
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
007 First Light007 First Light sold 1.5 million units within the first day of release. That is a loud return for James Bond on the games shelf after an extended hiatus. The action-adventure game comes from IO Interactive, the studio behind the Hitman…
Five Nights at Freddy'sFive Nights at Freddy's, known to fans as FNaF, asks its players for one thing: stay alive from midnight until 6 a.m. in a pizza restaurant after closing time. Scott Cawthon created the series, and it has grown from video games into…
Alan Wake 2Alan Wake 2 cost a reported 70 million euros, which makes it one of the most expensive cultural products in the history of Finland. Remedy Entertainment developed the 2023 survival horror game, and Epic Games Publishing released it. Its…
PUBG: BattlegroundsPUBG: Battlegrounds, a battle royale video game from 2017, once had 2,279,084 people playing it on Steam at the same moment. It reached that peak while still officially unfinished, listed as an early access title. The game began as a…
Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX deliberately turned backward to medieval castles and minstrels.
Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake's reveal sent Square Enix's stock to its highest point since November 2008.
Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on Leap Day, the 29th of February 2024. Square Enix chose that date deliberately.
Final Fantasy XVIIn Final Fantasy XVI, the hero hunts a fire monster that turns out to be him.
Resident Evil 4 (2023 video game)Resident Evil 4, Capcom's 2023 survival horror remake, earned an unusual compliment from the man who made the original. Shinji Mikami, who directed the 2005 game, said on Twitter that he enjoyed the remake very much. He also admitted that…
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 reached players on the 14th of November 2025, and within weeks its user score on Metacritic had fallen to 1.5. That was the lowest rating any Call of Duty game had ever received on the site. Yet critics were…
Fallout 4Fallout 4 begins on the 23rd of October 2077, the day the nuclear bombs fall. The 2015 action role-playing game comes from Bethesda Game Studios, and it is the fourth main entry in the Fallout series. Earlier games in the series start long…
Doom (1993 video game)Doom crashed a university network the night it was released in 1993. Ten thousand people tried to download it at once.
Directive 8020Directive 8020 is a 2026 survival horror game from Supermassive Games, and it opens with a murder. In the prologue, sleep technician Pari Simms kills her colleague Tomas Carter aboard the colony ship Cassiopeia. The two are the only people…
Persona 3Persona 3 asks its player to press a gun-shaped device against their own head and fire. The device is called an Evoker, and the shot summons a Persona, a physical form of the shooter's psyche. Atlus developed this role-playing game, which…
Destiny 2Destiny 2 is a shooter made by Bungie, and in June 2026 it receives what is billed as its final update, called Monument of Triumph. That update ends active development. The servers will stay on, though. Bungie confirmed that the game will…
Death StrandingDeath Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds,…
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was blocked from sale in Kuwait before release. Every pre-order in the country was cancelled and refunded, and Kuwaiti officials gave no reason. Publications guessed that the game's Gulf War setting was the cause.…
Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II replaced experience points with stats that grow by use. Its designer felt it went too far.
Elden RingGeorge R. R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's backstory, not its in-game story. Some critics found his role unclear.
Grand Theft Auto OnlineGrand Theft Auto Online went live on the 1st of October 2013 and asked its players to start as nobodies in the state of San Andreas. The state is fictional and based on Southern California. Up to 30 players can share its open world at the…
Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals reached 10 million players within 72 hours of its release on the 6th of December 2024. NetEase Games built this free-to-play hero shooter in collaboration with Marvel Games, and it draws its fighters from Marvel Comics. A…
It Takes Two (video game)It Takes Two, a 2021 adventure from Hazelight Studios, is a video game that nobody can finish alone. It has no single-player option. Every player needs a partner, either sitting nearby or connected online, and the story simply will not…
MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…
Persona 5Persona 5 opens in an interrogation room in Tokyo, and it keeps pulling the player back there. The 2016 role-playing game, built by the Atlus development studio P-Studio, is the sixth installment in the Persona series, which grew out of…
Among UsAmong Us, an online deduction game from the American studio Innersloth, arrived in June 2018 to an audience of roughly 30 to 50 players online at any one time. In late September 2020, the same game peaked at 3.8 million concurrent players.…
Hades (video game)Hades is a 2020 action game from Supergiant Games in which the hero dies again and again, and that failure is the point. Its hero, Zagreus, is the son of the ruler of the Underworld, and he badly wants to leave home. Every attempt turns…
Hollow Knight: SilksongHollow Knight: Silksong, a 2025 Metroidvania from the Australian independent studio Team Cherry, spent years as a game people talked about more than played. On the 16th of January 2021, a YouTube fan channel called Daily Silksong News…
The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
Alan WakeAlan Wake is a 2010 action-adventure game from the Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment, published by Microsoft Game Studios. Its hero is a bestselling crime novelist whose wife vanishes during a vacation in Bright Falls, a small fictional…
FortniteFortnite is a 2017 online game from Epic Games that now behaves more like a platform than a single title. Seven distinct modes share one engine and one overall look. They include a contest where up to 100 players fight to be the last one…
Black Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong is a 2024 action role-playing game from the Chinese studio Game Science. On the 22nd of August 2024, more than 2.4 million people were playing it on Steam at the same moment. Only PUBG: Battlegrounds had ever drawn a…
Baldur's Gate 3Wizards of the Coast first turned down Larian Studios' bid to make Baldur's Gate 3 in 2014.
Final Fantasy (video game)Final Fantasy got its name because its creator planned to quit if it failed. Square was also facing bankruptcy in 1987.
Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV began with a Formula One race. Hiroyuki Ito saw cars pass at different speeds and got an idea.
Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI lets its hero fail to save the world. The story's second half is called the World of Ruin.