CASE STUDY: Xbox Excellence Awards
Client: Microsoft / Xbox
Year: 2024
Project: Custom Trophy Design for the Xbox Excellence Awards
Category: Brand-Aligned Recognition | Gaming Industry
Who It Was For And Why It Mattered:
Microsoft came to us with a clear vision: create a custom trophy for the inaugural Xbox Excellence Awards, a recognition program rooted not in fanfare, but in data. These awards wouldn’t celebrate hype or opinion. They’d celebrate the games players returned to, played the longest, and rated the highest. Measured by metrics like Daily Active Users, Units Sold, and Store Ratings, these awards needed to resonate with a developer audience. People who know excellence when they see it.
They chose Bennett Awards because they needed more than a fabricator. They needed a creative partner who could interpret a brand like Xbox into something sculptural, iconic, and unforgettable.
How we brought it to life:
The design journey began with options. Our creative team explored multiple directions, from bold to intricate. But the final selection was quiet in its power—a sculptural interpretation of the Xbox logo, stripped down to its purest expression. A silver disc. No base. No embellishment. Just clarity, weight, and presence.
The award is cast in zinc and plated in highly reflective nickel. It stands at a precise angle, engineered to create depth and illusion. What appears spherical is, in truth, a clever play of line and light. This tilt enhances the illusion inside the Xbox logo, calling to mind the kind of spatial magic seen in Escher’s work.
Recipient names are printed directly on the surface to preserve the integrity of the form. There is nothing extra because nothing extra is needed.
Bennett project manager Perry Tow put it simply. “It takes designer confidence to embrace simplicity. This piece tells a story without explanation. And for developers, that story carries weight.”
What we delivered:
The result is a trophy that feels earned. An object that speaks to substance. It is sleek, solid, and unmistakably Xbox. It commands attention not through ornament, but through precision.
We also created custom presentation boxes using recycled materials, aligning with Microsoft’s sustainability goals. Our team continues to manage ongoing fulfillment, shipping more than one hundred of these awards each year to developers and studios across the country
Measurable Impact: Recognition That Resonates:
The Xbox Excellence Awards received strong social and media attention across the gaming industry. Free Range Games celebrated their win for Return to Moria, while North Beach Games publicly thanked Xbox for the honor. Game studio Palworld_EN shared their excitement on X, expressing gratitude for being recognized among the top-selling Xbox titles. The official Xbox Wire account promoted the awards, reinforcing their visibility across Microsoft's channels. Coverage extended into gaming media, with XboxEra and Windows Central both publishing articles on the awards. Additionally, Nextpit featured an editorial titled “Top-Rated or Overrated? The Xbox Games That Defined 2024,” which highlighted award-winning titles and sparked thoughtful discussion within the gaming community.
This year’s recipients included major titles like Madden, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and beloved franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Dragon Ball Z. Sports games made a dominant showing, including NBA 2K25, MLB The Show 24, and EA Sports College Football 25—all topping metrics for sustained engagement.
The physical award now acts as a visible signal of commercial and creative success—earning pride-of-place status in development studios across the U.S.