Xbox Game Studios

What Xbox Game Studios is

Xbox Game Studios is the name of Microsoft's first-party game development and publishing organisation, the body responsible for games released under the Xbox brand across console, PC and mobile. An Xbox Wire post announcing the name describes the organisation as Xbox's game development group and explains that the Xbox brand had expanded from its console roots to cover all devices, with Xbox Game Studios as the publishing and studio side of that structure.

The same post, published on February 5, 2019, states that the organisation was changing its name from Microsoft Studios to Xbox Game Studios and that it was then made up of 13 distinct game development teams. The name change reflected a stated intent to build a portfolio of games across console, PC and mobile rather than for a single device.

The studios and franchises

At the time of the 2019 name change, the Xbox Wire post listed the teams in the organisation as 343 Industries, The Coalition, Compulsion Games, The Initiative, inXile Entertainment, Minecraft, Ninja Theory, Obsidian Entertainment, Playground Games, Rare, Turn 10 Studios, Undead Labs and a global publishing group. It named Age of Empires, Forza, Gears of War, Halo and Minecraft among the franchises those teams were responsible for.

The post also referenced content updates planned for Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 4 and Minecraft, and described the previous year's expansion, in which seven new game development studios were added to the organisation. It framed the group as a portfolio of first-party teams producing exclusives, original properties and new entries in existing series.

Games in our database

Our database lists Xbox Game Studios as the publisher of Sea of Thieves and Minecraft Dungeons II. Sea of Thieves is developed by Rare, one of the first-party teams named in the 2019 announcement, and its official site describes it as a game with regular free monthly updates that add characters, content, mechanics and rewards.

Minecraft Dungeons II has an official Xbox page that names Xbox Game Studios as publisher and Mojang Studios as developer, lists it for Xbox Series X|S and Windows 10/11, and gives a release date of September 29, 2026. The Minecraft site states that the game is the sequel to the dungeon-crawling action-adventure Minecraft Dungeons, that it will also be available on Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and that it releases on September 29, 2026.

How the organisation works

Xbox Game Studios functions as both a studio group and a publisher. The 2019 announcement describes its teams as delivering exclusives and new chapters from established franchises, and notes that titles such as Crackdown 3, Gears 5 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps were set to be available to Xbox Game Pass members on the same day they launched.

The group publishes games developed by its own studios, as with Sea of Thieves from Rare and Minecraft Dungeons II from Mojang Studios. Our database records Xbox Game Studios only as a publisher rather than a developer, which is consistent with its role as the publishing and studio-holding organisation for Microsoft's first-party game teams.

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