The Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley, is closing in on its tenth show on December 7, 2023, and its many nominees have been revealed to the public. 2023 was an exceptionally strong year for video games on PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series X/S, giving their relevant categories plenty of strong contenders. While some games were snubbed at the Game Awards as usual, the diverse set of Alan Wake 2, Balder's Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder makes for a pleasing Game of the Year spread.

Unfortunately, a notable absence from the Game of the Year nominees isn't sitting well with its community. Despite having multiple representatives in other categories, no Xbox console exclusives are in the running for the GOTY award. While this wasn't as noticeable in 2022 given Xbox Game Studios’ light output, 2023 saw the release of Starfield alongside several other celebrated exclusives like Hi-Fi Rush and Forza Motorsport. The size of this award snub motivated Xbox fans to look back at the Game Awards’ history, shedding light on a trend that some have taken to calling the “Xbox Tax.”

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The Meaning and History of The Xbox Tax

“Xbox Tax” is shorthand for the perceived discrimination by the Game Awards against any title associated with Xbox, and it quickly began trending on social media after the 2023 Game Awards’ nominees were announced. Evidence for it was drawn from the history of Game of the Year categories throughout the Spike Video Game Awards, VGX, and the Game Awards. Since the Spike Video Game Awards began in 2003, only five years have featured Microsoft Game Studios titles in the Game of the Year category. Furthermore, after Halo: Reach’s nomination in 2010, no more Xbox games were nominated for GOTY awards at Spike and Keighley's shows. The Xbox games that ran for Spike’s GOTY category and their respective years are:

• Halo 2 - 2004
• Gears of War - 2006
• Halo 3 - 2007
• Gears of War 2 - 2008
• Halo: Reach - 2010

Meanwhile, games from Sony, Nintendo, and third-party publishers are flourishing. Since The Game Awards replaced the Spike Video Game Awards and VGX in 2014, Sony has only missed the GOTY vote for that year, while Nintendo didn't have GOTY nominees in 2016 and 2018. Both were present for VGX's Game of the Year category in 2013, and while Nintendo frequently missed Spike’s GOTY nominees, Sony was present more often than not. Sony and Nintendo have both won GOTY awards, which Xbox couldn't manage while represented by fan-favorite Halo and Gears of War titles. Considering the Xbox consoles’ dominance while the Spike Awards were running, it’s curious that Microsoft has struggled to even get nominated for GOTY awards.

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Why The Xbox Tax Isn't Real

However, that doesn't mean that video game award shows are conspiring against Microsoft. There are reasons why Microsoft’s games haven't been part of GOTY nominations, and they stem from the people tasked with setting the awards up. Nominees and winners at Spike and Geoff Keighley’s shows are voted on by juries made of gaming news representatives. The intent of these groups is to cast a wide net over the industry, and post-2017 Game Awards shows not only expanded this council to over fifty publications, but also began accepting votes from non-English sources by 2019. It bears noting that Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and AMD, as well as several other publishers, were charged with selecting the organizations to form these juries, so no particular company should have an advantage.

While representatives’ views affect the nomination process, the jury’s goal is to simulate the opinions of the average gaming enthusiast. To that end, Game of the Year nominees aren't chosen through sales or review scores, but rather the adoration a game inspires in its players. For instance, Starfield's Metacritic reviews are mostly positive, but only 19 critic scores out of 168 total reviews are perfect, while every game in the 2023 Game Awards GOTY category has a higher percentage of perfect ratings. Accounting for the mixed user reviews Starfield amassed since launch, it couldn't win enough players over to overtake games like Alan Wake 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 in securing GOTY votes.

The main takeaway from all this is that since Halo: Reach made the 2010 Spike Awards GOTY category, Microsoft hasn’t released anything that’s hooked players in the same way. No Xbox exclusives have achieved the mainstream popularity of even Marvel's Spider-Man for over a decade, despite the best efforts of properties like Halo, Gears of War, Forza, and even acquisitions like Minecraft and DOOM. 2023’s Game Awards were right to feature Hi-Fi Rush, Forza Motorsport, Starfield, and Diablo 4 as Microsoft representatives, but even with Hi-Fi Rush earning as many nominations as some GOTY contenders, no Xbox game made it to the GOTY category.

With Microsoft's current Game Pass model favoring smaller releases and live-service titles like Halo Infinite, fans should prepare to see this trend continue. Not all hope is lost, however; the Game Awards’ GOTY category is known to favor epic single-player adventures, and Xbox’s upcoming titles Avowed, Hellblade 2, and Fable all fit that mold. As things stand, Microsoft isn’t in danger of losing GOTY awards to a diabolical “Xbox Tax,” its priorities just need to shift toward pleasing players like Halo and Gears of War did back in Xbox’s heyday.

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