One of the gaming industry’s biggest events, Gamescom 2013, kicked off in Cologne this morning. A Microsoft conference opened the show and gave us some juicy bits of news about the upcoming Xbox One. Here’s a breakdown of the announcements:
- FIFA 14 FREE with every European Xbox One Pre-Order: A rumour started to circulate yesterday that Microsoft would be offering a copy of FIFA 14 to Xbox One Pre-Order customers, and Microsoft today confirmed the news. Each console will come with a download code for FIFA 14 completely free, rather than the usual £54.99 price tag. Microsoft also announced that exclusive FIFA 14 content would be coming to the Xbox One and Xbox 360. Owners of the Microsoft consoles will have exclusive access to Legends in the Ultimate Team mode, such as Pele and Freddie Ljungberg. Players will have the opportunity to get some amazing combinations of legendary and modern strikers. Messi alongside Bergkamp sounds pretty unstoppable to me?
- Fable Legends: There have rumours about a Fable title on the Xbox One for a few months now, and Gamescom 2013 was where the news was finally dropped. Fable Legends takes a bit of a detour from previous Fable games, adopting a four-person co-operative style of gameplay. Four players can take control of either a typical ‘Prince Charming’ type character with a rapier, a powerful magician, a wild female barbarian type and an archer who’s controlled from a third-person perspective. But the really intriguing bit is that a fifth player will control the villain, placing enemies, barriers and spells from a top-down viewpoint to try and stifle the heroes. All this takes place in the richly populated world of Fable and looks to be a very interesting addition to the Xbox One line-up.
- The Fighter Within: Ubisoft appeared during the conference to announce The Fighter Within, a motion-combat game that will use the Kinect to allow players to really place themselves in the role of the fighter. Not too much more is known about the game yet, but the concept could lead to a brilliant game if the Kinect camera can capture the player’s movement and action.
- Dedicated Xbox One Servers for Call of Duty: Ghosts: Infinity Ward, developer of a number of the Call of Duty games, including Ghosts, has announced that the game will feature dedicated servers hosted on the Xbox One’s new Cloud platform. This is a step away from the previous method of player-hosted multiplayer matches, which often led to server-lag or poor connections. A new game mode, ‘Blitz’, was announced for the multiplayer portion of the game, offering a gameplay style similar to that of Capture the Flag, but with capture points instead of a flag. Microsoft also announced some special bundles including the Xbox One console and Call of Duty: Ghosts, including special editions of the new Call of Duty title.
- Xbox One to get exclusive content for Tom Clancy’s ‘The Division’: Microsoft have announced that, to go alongside the exclusive smart-glass functionality that will be available on Xbox One, there will be even more exclusive content for the console both before and after the game’s release. Whilst Microsoft didn’t elaborate on what this content will be, this is still exciting news for those hoping to get an Xbox One.
- Anyone can develop on the Xbox One: Microsoft took the opportunity to discuss their policy towards Indie Developers for the Xbox One. To start with, Microsoft has announced that indie developers can apply now to try and get two free developer kits for the new console, in comparison to several thousand pounds for the kit for Xbox 360. Microsoft have said that developers with experience of producing and publishing games will be most likely to be granted these free kits, though there are plans to allow anyone with a console to develop in the future. There are also plans to make Indie games more visible on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and it seems like Microsoft are really putting an emphasis on Indie games for the new console, which is understandable given the way the market is shifting.
- Peggle 2 and Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare timed exclusives: Popcap announced that both Peggle 2 and Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare will be released on the Xbox One before any other console.
Stayed tuned to Einfogames.com for more Gamescom 2013 coverage.
