Games line-up will make Xbox One a success, insists Microsoft

The reason you will plump for the Xbox One over the PS4 is the games, says Microsoft's Harvey Eagle, even though gaming makes up only half of the entertainment features on offer.

Billing the much-maligned Xbox One as a platform that is "built for the future and packed with the latest and greatest technology," Xbox marketing director Eagle told journalists that gamers would look to the stellar line-up of titles available on the next-gen console.

"The question I am asked most is: 'why buy an Xbox One?' My answer is that when you are looking to buy a games machine, the first thing you are going to ask is where's the best place to play games first.

"All of the biggest franchises of today - FIFA, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield - are all available on Xbox One and some of the new franchises that gamers are getting excited about like Watchdogs, The Division and Bungie's new game Destiny are all available on Xbox One."

DLC

Eagle continued: "More than that there are a couple of those games that have downloadable content coming first to Xbox - Call of Duty and The Divison are examples of that. A game like FIFA is also better on Xbox One.

He went on to explain that exclusive games were also a huge draw and that he was particularly excited about Titanfall, a game he says is "probably the most anticipated of all the next generation of games that are coming at the moment from both E3 and Gamescom," noting that: "There's a lot of buzz about that title and that's a game that you are only going to play on Xbox."

Eagle also pointed to the Xbox Live heritage and 300,000 dedicated servers for the service, but he did inevitably mention the TV services that Microsoft top-billed (ahead of games) when it first showed the console.

"But gaming is really only half the story, the other half is our entertainment features on the box.

"What we have set out to do from the beginning is build a box that's obviously great for games but also great for handling entertainment; a box that allows you to watch movies on demand, TV on demand, live TV, surf the web, make skype calls, access apps and all of these things come together in one box for the first time under the television."

A titan of the next-gen

Of course, some of the TV features will be a little limited outside of the US from the off, so the games remain the most obvious point that Microsoft will push in the UK, but what is Eagle most looking forward to playing himself?

"From a gaming point of view, I think at the moment the game that is exciting me most about the Xbox One from a personal perspective is Titanfall.

"It's a game that is using the cloud to offset certain certain computational tasks - particularly around multiplayer - and what that means is that the residual power of the box to create an incredible game that works at 60fps and 1080p."

Here's what Microsoft brought to Gamescom 2013: