Earlier this week, we highlighted two big betas that were happening on Xbox in May 2025, and one of these has already been a massive hit with both players and critics - and it's the upcoming extraction shooter, ARC Raiders.
Looking around at some of the previews of the game so far, multiple outlets have described ARC Raiders as being a better extraction shooter than Bungie's Marathon, including the likes of PC Gamer, Windows Central and Forbes.
Here's a glimpse at some of the ARC Raiders previews we've spotted:
Push Square
"Arc Raiders is a game we can’t wait to play more of. We’d love to spend more time with its progression systems to see if they’re really worth investing in, but it’s nice to know it has a reason to grind outside of loot alone. Still, what really impressed us is the game’s out-in-the-field experience."
Windows Central
"I know we're still five months away from the launch of Bungie's extraction shooter, Marathon, but I don't know if five months is anywhere close to the amount of time they'd need to bring it up to par with Embark Studios' ARC Raiders."
PC Gamer
"Going in, I was way more interested in Marathon. Not only is it an FPS (the superior camera angle to Arc Raiders' third-person), but I was sure that if anybody was going to get me jazzed about an extraction shooter that isn't Hunt: Showdown, it'd be Bungie. Now that I've played four hours of both, I'm surprised to report that Arc Raiders is the extraction shooter I can't stop thinking about."
TheGamer
"The game took me completely by surprise; everything from its outstanding graphics to its stylish world design felt like it just appeared out of nowhere. I’d heard of the game, sure, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite this polished when I dived in for the first time."
Forbes
There’s no telling if ARC will for sure be a hit or if Marathon will for sure be a failure. It’s not that simple. But observing how this has gone, it’s impossible not to compare the two and say this has been a much better week for ARC.
IGN
"ARC Raiders previews pretty well, perhaps because its design conservatism makes it so instantly familiar. There’s absolutely nothing here to challenge what came before, but sometimes, that’s okay. Overall, the ARC Raiders loop seems pretty well tuned to satisfy: make it to the surface to loot and kill, bring your goods and experience back underground to improve your abilities, head back up stronger to find stronger gear, and repeat."
As you can see, IGN is a little bit lukewarm on it, but the majority of critics seem to be impressed with what they've played so far. There's also potentially still time for you to play it before the Tech Test 2 ends on May 4th, as the official ARC Raiders website is still taking sign-ups and rolling out invites to lucky players on an ongoing basis.
ARC Raiders will officially release for Xbox sometime in 2025, with an exact date to be announced later this year. We've also discovered that it's no longer going to be a free-to-play title, with the team revealing that it'll launch at a $40 price point instead - allowing them to "create a more focused, balanced, and engaging action-survival experience".