Today at gamescom, Aaron Greenberg, Xbox Head of Marketing, kicked off our presence at the show by looking back at what a memorable year it’s been thus far for Xbox – as well as giving everyone a glimpse into of some of the exciting things to come.
A Quick Look Back
At E3 in June, we talked about our commitment to let gamers play without boundaries giving more choice in how and where they can play. We showcased Xbox Play Anywhere, a program that lets you buy a digital game once and then play it on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, and we talked about some new Xbox Live features to make it even easier to find and play with other gamers – Clubs, Looking for Group and Arena – all available on Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, iOS or Android device.
We talked about Gaming for Everyone and how we’re working hard to ensure that players are able to choose and customize their own gaming experiences to make them even more fun, competitive and respectful.
Demand for Xbox One S; Anticipation for Windows 10 Games
We’ve seen unprecedented demand for Xbox One S across Europe and around the world, and today, we announced two new bundles for FIFA fans in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. With the Xbox One S FIFA 17 Bundle – available with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive – EA SPORTS™ delivers the next installment of the biggest-selling sporting franchise in the world with exclusive content in FIFA Ultimate Team for Xbox fans. EA Access* members will also get to play FIFA 17 first exclusively on Xbox One beginning on September 22 – five full days before it launches.
ID@Xbox Reaches New Milestone
On the independent games front, gamescom marks the third anniversary of our announcement of the ID@Xbox program. Since its inception, the ID@Xbox team has worked with developers to launch 300 titles, many of which have brought innovations helping advance the future of our industry. Today, Chris Charla shared that we are currently working with over 1,000 developers in over 60 countries, who are continuing to bring their visions to life on Xbox across both Xbox One and Windows 10.
We also announced the expansion of Xbox Game Preview to Windows 10. This program gives gamers the chance to preview and purchase work-in-progress digital titles, participate in the development process and help developers make Windows 10 games the best they can be. One of our first titles available later this year will be Everspace by Rockfish Games, and there will be many more to come.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.