NEWS FLASH 21/01/2014

More Xbox One exclusives planned for announcement in 2014

"I want to have a great E3 this year," says Phil Spencer

• 27  Comment

Titanfall

Jason West and Vince Zampella cast a long shadow across the games industry. After leaving Infinity Ward and Activision amid acrimony and litigation, the pressure is on to create a new series to top Call of Duty, one of the most entrenched console franchises around. Their solution: bring on the mechs.

Humanity is spread across Earth and a number of frontier planets, where a District 9 aesthetic hosts a battle for resources between corporate interests and groups of local resistance. Ground combat is between agile, super-fast soldiers who are just as comfortable running along walls as the floor - aided by "legions of AI", and powerful weapons that can dissolve multiple targets at the same time. And then there are the 24-feet high Titan mechs, which are able to dodge responsively while they spray the battlefield with ordnance. It's chaotic, exciting and a bit terrifying

Halo 5

Here's everything we currently know about Halo on Xbox One: it runs at 60 frames a second, stars Master Chief (who's developed a fondness for raggedy knitwear), offers dedicated servers for multiplayer, and makes use of the Xbox Live cloud. Beyond that, we're in the dark. The title's pedigree is second to none, however, making this an unquestionable if under-worded pick for our most-anticipated shooter sequel of 2014. Hopefully, Microsoft will have more to say on the subject after getting Titanfall out of the way in the spring.

Project Spark

Microsoft's kid-friendly game-making tool is coming to Xbox 360 as well as Xbox One. Anything you make can be shared and played on both, but the next-gen version has a couple of unique features: using the new Kinect 2.0, you can add personalised motion capture and voiceover to any hero, NPC or enemy, and use those animations to create custom cutscenes and gameplay.

We had the chance to see these new features in action during a recent demo, and were impressed by just how effortless the entire process seemed. Kinect picked up both body and facial gestures with relative ease, and after recording your animation, you can crop what you've captured, editing the marked in and out points as necessary to achieve the desired cinematic result. And afterwards, you can share your creations online, allowing friends to edit or enjoy them as they see fit.

Kinect Sports Rivals

Kinect 2.0 needs a friend fighting its corner right now, and developer Rare, as with the original Kinect Sports, has created one of the best examples of the new device's potential - and easily the most entertaining.

The new mini-games, including the wake racing (now available in the Preseason trial) and wall climbing, are easily as entertaining as previous efforts, but they're almost overshadowed by the new Create a Champion feature, which scans a stylised version of you into the game world. Starting with a full body scan before moving on to a more detailed analysis of your face, it's light years away from bobble-headed Avatars. Create a Champion picks up your skin tone, face shape, face size, hair colour, hair mass and even whether you're wearing glasses or not. The results are really impressive, and even if you do find it unflattering, you can tweak and change your character's appearance before unleashing them on the game's island setting.

Quantum Break

Remedy has revealed a few more details of its mysterious time-bending adventure, chief among them protagonist Jack Joyce. A survivor of a failed experiment that killed his brother, Jack possesses the ability to interfere with time, and uses his powers to rescue a woman caught in a wreckage. He can also, per the latest footage, bend time while embroiled in Gears-style over-the-shoulder gunplay - to stop an exploding car in mid-air, for example.

Though the excerpt we've been shown ran in real-time in-engine, we're waiting for information on precisely how the game and its accompanying live-action elements will play out together - they'll both be released on the same disc, and the live-action story will branch depending on your actions in the game. Remedy's creative director, Sam Lake, states that the company is "taking things that are familiar, from other mediums - from movies and books - that have never been experienced in interactive forms... In the game, your choices define your 'director's cut' of the show."

Remedy has a lot of prior form when it comes to eccentric sci-fi action titles, so this should be an utterly fascinating game, if not necessarily a cast-iron guaranteed 10 out of 10. It's also the figurehead for Microsoft's plans to somehow merge non-interactive and interactive entertainment on Xbox One, so the degree to which critics and customers warm to it will have long-term ramifications for the manufacturer. We wish we had more details to share. Hopefully, we will soon.

Sunset Overdrive

Sunset Overdrive is an open world shooter that throws in a free running spin – much like Mirror’s Edge. For some reason, currently unknown, people have been transformed into monsters and it’s up to you to survive the mutant onslaught. The game is also said to utilise the Xbox One cloud in order to learn the way players play and deliver regular content updates.

Sunset Overdrive is currently in development for the Xbox One with a vague release window of 2014.

Plants vs. Zombies™ Garden Warfare

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare digs into the trenches with an explosive new Co-op and Multiplayer action experience. Blast zombies and plants across a mine-blowing world that delivers the depth of a traditional online shooter blended with the refreshing humor of Plants vs. Zombies.

Coming exclusively first to Xbox One and Xbox 360 on February 18, 2014!

Fantasia : Music Evolved

The game "transports players to a breathtaking world where music and magic combine to transform extraordinary interactive landscapes in entirely new and creative ways!" What does "breathtaking" boil down to in practical terms? On the strength of currently available assets, it means giant turtles.

"In this game, players enter the magical realms of Fantasia, selected by the legendary sorcerer Yen Sid to hone their musical and magical prowess as his new apprentice," the release continues. "Fantasia: Music Evolved takes players on an interactive and immersive motion-controlled journey through worlds of music and magic, unleashing their creativity along the way."

Fable Legends

The game supports four player co-op, and is compatible with SmartGlass. It's an always-online game that calls on Xbox One's cloud support, and is set 400 years before the events of the very first Fable on the original Xbox.

Character setups include an archer controlled in classic third-person shooter viewpoint, a swordsman, a magician armed with the power to slow time, and a barbarian with a Yorkshire accent. The big surprise is that one player gets to control the game's villain, viewing the world from a top-down perspective and placing enemies, traps and ambushes.

Below

Sword & Sworcery EP was a bizarre combination of hipster-romance and soundtrack-tribute - and was iOS only. It was a game that gave you less healthy as you got further in, and included its own in-game rock concert. Essentially, a very strange game.

Below, by contrast, seems to be another very odd-looking game. It's extremely zoomed out - you seem to control an absolutely tiny hero. It's also a roguelike, meaning it generates new levels randomly and that when you die, you stay dead. No returns.

From the video, it appears to be a co-op game, with players able to take the role of warrior or archer as they explore the caverns and subterranean halls of a mysterious island

Cobalt

It’s hard to be a metal face. Agent Cobalt has learned as much after finding the Space Exploration Foundation's lost colonization ship The Seed at planet X9CSEC5.5B-blue, Trunkopia. It was once built by a one million strong development team back on Earth, but disappeared merely 30 minutes after its subspace jump. Whatever happened on board during its misadventure, sanity was not invited.

Cobalt is an action game of running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, piñata-ing, passing, scoring ... and even more rolling! Play cooperatively with friends or defeat your enemies in a death match, loot match, race match, or Capture the Plug matches. (Or one of the other game modes, of course!)

D4

Deadly Premonition designer Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro Xbox One exclusive D4 is, it transpires, a downloadable episodic Walking Dead-style point and click series featuring prompt-driven action, comprehensive Kinect support and surreal humour. Thanks for the write-up, IGN.

The game's full title is Dark Dreams Don't Die, and the star is a mad-eyed detective named David, who's able to relive memories as playable sequences by touching objects (aka, "time travel"). The game uses Kinect throughout - you can speak voice options in dialogue, and perform actions using gestures - but the functionality is optional, and the game can be played sitting down.

All info credited to www.Xbox.com

A good year indeed, sales will be high.

 It is going to be a great year for  all three consoles..  Way better than the previous years that's for sure.

Lots of big titles, Halo 5 is going to push a ton of consoles.

Titanfall isn't X1 exclusive though.

Its Xbox exclusive. Here Ill change the title to help the fans out there not get knickers in twist.

I didn't realize my PC was an xbox, thanks for pointing that out :)

Anyways your title does say "Amazing 2014 for Xbox One exclusives" I was just making sure you were aware it's not exclusive.

Fable Legends coming this year already ? I expect either this or Halo 5 to be delayed.

Anyway not bad. Btw Forza Horizon 2 is heavily rumored as well.
http://www.xboxachievements.com/news/news-17091-Forza-Horizon-2-Coming-to-Xbox-One-in-2014-.html

Yes but it'll be much better on PC :D

So technically ONLY Xbox CONSOLE exclusive. The real men will get the PC version.

It's a good list. I'll own most of those titles the day they come out. Hopefully these games don't disappoint!!

Halo 5 wont be delayed I doubt, 2 years is enough time to develop Halo 5.