Game Pass 2024 – Year In Review

In this feature, we look at what came out on Game Pass in 2024 and how that compared to 2023, considering the number and quality of games released.

With the acquisition of Activision and a finally mature first party release cadence, we were all expecting Xbox to finally smash one out of the park, but was that the reality? There’s more to consider here too, and we will look at ALL the games, whether first or third party, as we check in on whether Game Pass is as good value as it’s ever been despite the ever-increasing costs.

First Party Highlights

Wow. This is a pretty good quantity of games for first party (OK, some second party too) in a calendar year, particularly by Xbox’s standards. We had definite highlights and headline-grabbing moments, with the most notable being Diablo IV coming to Game Pass, as well as the additions of Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones.

All three of those hit the mark, but the games I didn’t list above also tell a story. Hellblade 2 had a fairly poor reception, not masked by winning plaudits (and awards) for its stellar graphics and performances, while both Flight Sim and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 had rocky initial outings that thankfully didn’t quite derail both of their launches.

Most of the rest were either helping add variety (Age of Mythology, Ara) or relatively straightforward Activision drop ins (Crash & Spiro Trilogies, Crash Racing, Modern Warfare III), which, while we’ve learnt we can’t take them for granted, should probably be thought of more as a replacement for what used to be those incredible third party Game Pass deals that dropped with regularity in prior years.

One other thing that deserves noting, we lost Forza Horizon 4 due to delisting this year, which was one of Game Pass’s top ten games by Metascore and user score.

Third Party Highlights

From a third party standpoint, as alluded to above, first and second party did the heavy lifting throughout 2024, with few blockbuster titles coming to Game Pass (particularly on Day 1). My Game of the Year Still Wakes the Deep is a true highlight, however, while clever ‘gets’ like Palworld, Manor Lords (PC), Frostpunk 2 (PC) and Little Kitty Big City did help get some decent headlines amidst plenty of critical acclaim. Palworld really deserves a shout out all of its own – this was an inspired signing for whoever made that deal. What, on paper, looked like a cheap, cash grab of a game with potential legal controversy surrounding it, ended up being played by millions and in mainstream news. So well done on that one, Team Xbox.

The rest are largely EA Play titles dropping in as you’d expect (but still not to be sniffed at), along with a few nice critical darlings like Persona 3: Reload, Another Crab’s Treasure and Harold Halibut.

Note: these are just our personal highlights – it’s not an exhaustive list as there were over 140 new titles added in 2024.

First Party vs 2023

With Forza, Starfield and Redfall on the release schedule for 2023, we were counting our chickens and assuming it was going to be a mammoth year (hey, sounds like 2024!). Throw in the shadow-drop of Hi-Fi Rush at the start of the year and Xbox fans were well-and-truly rubbing their hands with glee. However, Redfall was a stinker that resulted in the closure of the studio (not that the quality of Hi-Fi Rush saved Tango the same fate [initially]), Starfield didn’t gain the critical acclaim that would have been hoped for it, and Forza Motorsport suffered yet another muted launch for the series and quickly dropped off the engagement charts.

Third Party vs 2023

Looking back to 2023 helps to show the subtle change in approach Microsoft is taking now with 3rd parties on Game Pass. Thanks to the Activision back catalogue and the huge stable of developers now on board, they can drop multiple titles throughout the year with fewer costly deals required to keep players happy. In 2023 we saw multiple Persona games and multiple Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, which must have cost a pretty penny to secure.

BIG deals for others like Cocoon, Cities Skylines 2, Jusant and Lies of P eclipse much of what we had in 2024, while it’s hard to imagine getting another deal for something like GTA or Monster Hunter in the current climate. It’s very clear to see the impact of the Persona and Like a Dragon deals in the list below.

Additions: 2024 vs 2023

Directly comparing the games added in 2024 with those in 2023 gives us an insight into whether things have improved year on year, and if there are any areas for concern. From the table below, we can see that 2024 has had the edge over 2023, though there isn’t much in it at all. While there were marginally more games added in 2023, the ones added in 2024 had a higher Metascore (again, relatively marginally).

Overall: 2024 Change

When comparing new additions to Game Pass in 2024 with those leaving, it’s a case of greens across the board, with a big increase in games added to the service (+23) as well as improvements in both the Metascore (+0.78) and average user review scores (+0.03) of games added versus those leaving the service.

Overall: 2023 Change

Conversely, looking at 2023, a very similar number of games left Game Pass compared to those added (149 vs 151), but there were almost identical increases in Metascores (+0.78) and user scores (+0.03) to 2024. So very little to choose between the two years.

A Note On Q3 and Q4 2024

While looking at the year as a whole, things appear largely positive or at least equal compared to 2023, with the added bonus of more coming from first party, there’s something worth flagging that has been a bit of a trend since the Game Pass price increase at the start of Q4, but even going back to Q3. On average, in Q4 2024 we saw just 8 games per month added to Game Pass Ultimate, the lowest across 2023 or 2024. In Q3, we saw an average of 10, the second lowest, jointly, with Q1 2023.

Now, a caveat to that is that Q4 2024 had the highest average Metascore for Game Pass games across the two years (80), but it has certainly been noticeable that in the past few Game Pass drops there have been fewer games added to Ultimate, and more focus on the Standard tier (in such a way you could even call it misleading). And this shows no signs of changing in 2025. For example, the below is the promotional art for the January 2025 first Game Pass wave:

At first glance it looks great, but look closer and you can see that only one new game is coming to Game Pass Ultimate on console (UFC 5), with four of the games merely making the jump from Ultimate to Standard tiers. This has been a way for Xbox to maintain some PR beats while having very little content coming to the service and is a worrying trend of late.

Conclusions

2024 was a similar year in many ways to 2023. It started with so much promise: a good number of big-hitters from first party in particular. However, with many of those games not quite meeting expectations, there will always be a tinge of disappointment for what could have been.

While there were some worrying signs from the back half of the year, there can be no denying the frequency and (for the most part) the quality of the Xbox first party releases in 2024

Some notes on this data: We are only interested in the Game Pass Ultimate tier for this. We may expand to look at other tiers in the future. For the purposes of this exercise, where the console or PC version of a game is already on Game Pass and the other version also joins, we do not count it as an additional game coming to the service. In the same way, if only one version leaves, we don’t count it as a departure. Prices and review scores listed is the data as of the date listed below, meaning the prices & scores of games from the year previously (when used in point of comparison in this article), are likely to be cheaper than they would have been when they actually joined Game Pass and may have different average scores (especially user scores).

For Metacritic scores, we generally take the score from the platform with the most reviews, unless there is a reason not to (e.g. instead of taking Goldeneye 64’s 96 Metacritic score for the recent Xbox re-release, we opt to not give it a score as there are not enough reviews of that version). Data captured January 8th 2025.