People's Choice: These are the best Xbox Game Studios

Xbox (as an integral part of Microsoft) is notoriously known as being the company that buys other game studios and brings them under its wing. The company even had a Developers to Watch list at some point, highlighting the game studios that could potentially be bought by Microsoft.

Xbox doesn’t shy away from getting its hand on big players as well: Ninja Theory, the well-known game studio behind the popular Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice title, was bought by Microsoft in 2018, for a $117 million sum.

More recently, the gaming industry’s largest acquisition was also made by Microsoft when it bought the ABK triad (Activision-Blizzard-King) for the gigantic sum of $69 billion.

The Redmond-based tech giant currently owns 40 game studios around the world under the Microsoft Gaming flag, separated into three major departments: Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, and Activision Blizzard.

Today, we’ll take a look at the people’s choice for the best Xbox Game Studios from within the eponymous department, which encompasses 15 studios, according to public sources. These are:

• 343 Industries
• Compulsion Games
• Double Fine
• inXile Entertainment
• Mojang Studios
• Ninja Theory
• Obsidian Entertainment
• Playground Games
• Rare
• The Coalition
• The Initiative
• Turn 10 Studios
• Undead Labs
• World’s Edge
• Xbox Game Studios Publishing

The people’s choice for the best Xbox Game Studios was discussed in a Reddit thread and almost all of these studios mentioned above made it to the list. But let’s see what they have to say.

The best Xbox Game Studios, according to people

Obisidan Entertainment

The studio is responsible for titles such as New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, or Pillars of Eternity.

For me, it’s Obsidian Entertainment. Between New Vegas, The Outer Worlds, Pentiment, Pillars of Eternity and (much to my surprise) Grounded, they’ve consistently crafted games that I’ve poured countless hours into.

Reddit user

Obsidian for me, they are very consistent and hit the right buttons for me.

Reddit user

Playground

The studio developed some of the Forza Horizon titles.

Playground has been constantly pushing the limits. They are the studio to beat IMO

Reddit user

I guess Playground.

Reddit user

Playground games with Forza never disappoints me. Many people have said that they could be Xbox’s insomniac if Fable lives up to the hype.

Reddit user

Playground. They care more about Forza’s success than Turn 10 themselves and at this point, Horizon is the face of the Forza series, not Motorsport.

Reddit user

It’s worth mentioning here that the Turn 10 Studios might earn a bad reputation due to the way the company hires talent to work on the Forza games.

343 Industries

This legendary studio is the one behind the Halo franchise, along with Bungie.

343 Industries. I love Halo a lot and I know that they have had rough patches 100%, but Halo is special to me.

Reddit user

343 Industries. Now for 343 Industries, I still say they’re getting there but HALO 4 was one of their best HALO games I’ve played since the 360.

Reddit user

343i have been improving a lot since the change in leadership and I love Halo so I guess they’re up there

Reddit user

Ninja Theory

The studio’s most popular title is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and its sequel is expected to come out this year on Xbox consoles.

Ninja Theory, Hellblade on its own is outstanding.

Reddit user

These are the most popular choices made by Reddit users. You can also follow the Reddit thread, to see what other choices there are. In the meantime, what is your favorite Xbox Game Studio? Let us know in the comments section below.