Xbox One delivers kicks at Gamescom

Microsoft’s Major Nelson confirmed that FIFA 14 would be free to all pre-orders of the Xbox One in Europe. As an additional incentive, FIFA 14’s Ultimate Team Legends feature will only be available on the Microsoft console. For those interested, EA will reveal the full roster of legends later.

In other Gamescom news, Microsoft made a number of announcements to entice gamers (and developers) to their console. They published the full list of launch titles that will be available for the Xbox One, which has 23 entries. Fable Legends, a four-person co-op game with heavy use of SmartGlass was revealed. Microsoft and Ubisoft announced that Tom Clancy’s The Division would have exclusive content, although there wasn’t much specific to say about it. For all the Call of Duty fans, Infinity Ward said that Call of Duty: Ghosts on Xbox One would use the Xbox Live Cloud service to host dedicated multiplayer servers.

Finally, Microsoft issued some details of their indie games program, called ID@Xbox. It will offer free Xbox One development kits to developers and an easier path to publication. Unlike the current Indie Games Marketplace on the Xbox 360, the ID@XBox program will offer many of the bells and whistles that big-money blockbuster titles get.

Games that come through this program will be able to access the exact same features as any other large game company on Xbox One: Achievements, Gamerscore, Kinect, Xbox SmartGlass, Xbox cloud services and more. What’s also exciting is that these games will be available in the exact same marketplace (Xbox One Store) as every other game on Xbox One, making discovery for players easier by using all the curation and discovery tools that Xbox One will offer, including Spotlight, Trending, Recommendations and great social discovery with features like Game DVR and Upload.

Unfortunately, a launch date for the Xbox One was not announced despite heavy speculation that Microsoft should have a firm date set by now.