There’s no Microsoft Wrapped this year, but there is a recap — Microsoft left out all the bad news

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The Microsoft Store has gotten a major makeover this year with several updates. It’s now simpler to uninstall apps, searching is more effective, and you can personalize your experience with a new Themes section.

Microsoft made the Store easier to use, faster to load, and streamlined how apps are updated.

Popular apps like Adobe Creative Cloud, Discord, Slack, and Spotify are now available in the Microsoft Store.

Spotify has a year-end feature called Wrapped that shows you your listening habits, but the Microsoft Store doesn’t have anything similar. It would be really useful to see a summary of all the apps I downloaded and updated during the year, and to find out which ones I used the most.

As an analyst, I’ve noticed a lot of companies – like PlayStation, Instagram, and YouTube – have followed Spotify’s lead with their year-in-review features. Interestingly, Xbox sat out this trend in 2025, but they’ve announced plans to launch something similar next year. For those Xbox gamers eager for a personalized year-end summary right now, True Achievements is offering a great alternative.

The Microsoft Store doesn’t offer personalized yearly summaries for each customer, but Giorgio Sardo, a Vice President at Microsoft Store, recently shared an article detailing improvements made to the platform.

Sardo reviewed the enhancements we talked about, including special events happening in the store. He also detailed how the Microsoft Store now offers a more customized experience for each customer.

The Microsoft Store also gained an AI hub to help people discover AI apps.

What Microsoft left out

As you’d expect from Microsoft Store’s vice president, the article “2025 in review” highlights positive developments.

The Microsoft Store has improved a lot and is now a key app for many users, with ongoing new features being added. However, it’s also faced some negative attention and controversy throughout the year.

As a long-time Microsoft Store user, I was surprised to find out you can’t turn off automatic app updates anymore! Usually, updates are great – they fix bugs and add new features. But honestly, sometimes I just prefer sticking with an older version of an app if it’s working perfectly for me, and now I don’t have that choice.

As an analyst, I’ve been tracking Microsoft’s recent moves, and this year they discontinued their Movies & TV store within the Microsoft Store. While customers can no longer buy new movies or shows there, thankfully, anything they’ve already purchased remains accessible through the Movies & TV app.

The Microsoft Store also stopped working on older Windows phones in 2025. Since Windows Phone hasn’t been supported for a long time, it likely didn’t impact many people.

Several of Microsoft’s apps available in the Microsoft Store received some negative feedback this year. Microsoft says the new Outlook app is built specifically for Windows, but that’s not entirely true. For a while now, Microsoft has been encouraging users to switch to the new Outlook, and even stopped the older Mail & Calendar app from functioning last year to push the update.

Microsoft aims to deliver top-quality apps on Windows 11. However, if they release web-based apps disguised as fully-featured programs, it could influence other companies and developers to do the same.

The 2025 Microsoft Store Awards caused a lot of disappointment, including for me. It seems the winners were chosen based on their use of AI, rather than the actual quality of their apps or games.

While many of the award-winning apps are excellent, some choices are surprising. For example, Castle Craft, a game released in 2024, was surprisingly named the 2025 Microsoft Store Game of the Year.

It was strange – when Sardo was going over the best apps and games of 2025, I noticed he completely left out Castle Craft. I found it really odd that he didn’t mention it at all.

We’ve recently added a bunch of great new products to our store! You’ll find helpful tools to boost your productivity, including Raycast, Noteastic, and Cephable. We also have popular games like Fortnite and Hollow Knight: Silksong, along with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. For accessibility, check out DotVista, and we’re excited to offer standout apps like RunCat 365 and Adobe Premiere Elements 2026.

I expected the 2025 Microsoft Store Game of the Year to be specifically named. However, Sardo shared a link to the winner of the 2025 App Awards instead.

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2025-12-19 18:10