The Xbox One has always got a bit of a bad rap when it comes to exclusives. Sure, the console did tail off towards the end when Microsoft's games pipeline seemed to clog up, but the first few years were amazing - we'll die on that hill. From 2016 onwards the console no-doubt began slowing down, but 10 years ago in 2015, the team delivered a pretty incredible lineup of games we think it's time to look back on and appreciate.

Let's start early in the year, shall we? On March 11th, Xbox delivered Ori And The Blind Forest; an absolutely gorgeous metroidvania that was so very hyped by its early 2015 release date. Eventually going on to spawn a sequel in 2020, the first Ori game marked a turning point for Microsoft, a moment where Xbox began putting real focus on smaller titles again. What a game to pick from!

Later that month we got Forza Horizon 2: Fast and Furious; a fantastic standalone Forza experience that was easily worth the low asking price at the time. This one has now succumbed to the unfortunate fate of being delisted, but those of us who grabbed it back then can still access the title in our game libraries today. By the way, this one is perfectly playable on Xbox Series X|S as well!

As usual, there was a bit of a summertime lull that followed (aside from State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition coming out), but Microsoft soon picked up the pace for what was going to be a pretty incredible end to the year. This started with a collection of classics in Rare Replay - the team's first non-Kinect release in quite a while. This bundle remains an absolutely essential title, and thankfully, you can still grab it via Xbox Game Pass right now.

In what ended up being a pretty busy August for the Xbox team, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition launched just a few weeks after Rare Replay back in 2015. This is basically a full remake of the first Gears game, and at the time, we actually think Xbox undersold this release a bit, probably due to the hype around Gears of War 4. Gears Ultimate still looks and plays amazingly well a decade later, and we're even hearing rumours about it potentially coming to PS5. That'll be an interesting turn of events if it happens!

Finally, Microsoft's big triple threat for the end of the year was Forza Motorsport 6, Halo 5: Guardians and Rise of The Tomb Raider; the latter of which was picked up as a year-long Xbox One exclusive before it moved to PS4. When you lay all of these games out it does make you appreciate those early Xbox One years, and we'd kill for a lineup like this again. Alas, game dev length these days makes it less likely, but we're excited to see if Microsoft can get close to this cadence of big game releases once more in the near future. They're definitely on the right track.

Anyway, it's been a whole decade now, but we still appreciate what Xbox One brought to the table - especially in those early years. It wasn't always the most fashionable console (especially after its rough launch), but we got some incredible games back then - evidenced by this stacked 2015 lineup. We still play some of these games to this day!

Do you have as fond memories of this era as we do? Talk to us about your favourite early Xbox One games down below.