Talking Point: As We Approach GOTY Season, What’s Your Pick As Things Stand?

The votes for Pure Xbox GOTY will begin in two months’ time!

We’re getting closer and closer to Game of the Year season! We’ll be opening up the votes for the annual Pure Xbox GOTY poll in about two months’ time, but before we get there, we thought we’d reach out for your preliminary thoughts on what deserves the #1 spot in 2025 so far.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like this year has been tough! Personally, it’s going to be a toss-up between Split Fiction, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and South of Midnight (unless anything else manages to blow me away before December), but there are so many other potential candidates here – Hollow Knight: Silksong, Blue Prince, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Monster Hunter Wilds… the list goes on and on.

For what it’s worth, Split Fiction is the highest-rated 2025 game for Xbox on Metacritic right now.

Looking back to the past few years, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was the eventual winner of the Pure Xbox Game of the Year award in 2024, Starfield received the highest votes in 2023, Elden Ring took the #1 spot in 2022, Halo Infinite was the victor in 2021, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps came out on top in 2020.

You’ll notice a common trend here – four out of the five winners have all been Xbox first-party games. Is there a chance that’ll happen again in 2025? Maybe, but it possibly depends on how well Keeper, Ninja Gaiden 4, The Outer Worlds 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 fare in a few weeks’ time. Perhaps Avowed, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Oblivion Remastered and/or South of Midnight will be right up there too? We’ll have to wait and see.

Stay tuned for the votes in December, but for now, let us know your GOTY as things stand in the comments.

Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.

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