The Xbox Series X|S was never a arcade machine. There are 4 here worth knowing — Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport 2023, Hi-Fi Rush among them — and if the genre is what you are after, another console is the better answer.
The most powerful console of its generation, with a library defined less by exclusivity than by breadth — everything arrives here, and much of it arrives inside the subscription on day one.
This is not one of its strengths. Anything you could only get here. Almost every headline game on this machine is also on something else.
Filtering to arcade means you want short runs and a score, not a campaign. It is the right filter when what you liked was the one-more-go feeling.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
A complete experience in twenty minutes, and a skill you keep. Arcade design is measured in the moment after you lose.
Story and progression. Arcade games repeat on purpose, and if you want to be pulled somewhere they will not do it.
Saying a console is weak at something is more useful than padding a list. If arcade is what you actually want, these machines are built for it:
Forza Horizon 5 is the usual first answer, and there are 4 in the library we cover.
Not especially. The NES, Genesis, Saturn are better answers for this genre.
They were designed to end. A machine that let you play for an hour on one coin did not earn its floor space, so difficulty was the business model.
Constantly, mostly by small teams. Several of the best beat-em-ups and run-and-guns of the last decade are new games built on forty-year-old design rules.
From the games this site covers on the Xbox Series X|S, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.
Or browse the whole Xbox Series X|S library.