Microsoft is starting off 2016 with some announcements on their 2016 games line-up and records from previous year.
During the holidays, Xbox Live has set a new record for global engagement.
According to Xbox’s Corporate VP Of Marketing, Mike Nichols, December 20 – December 27 had more gamers using Xbox Live and the number of hours spent gaming on Xbox One and Xbox 360 were up compared to last year.
Microsoft also saw a “global engagement and sales fueled by high demand on their greatest games line-up, hardware and accessories like the best-selling Xbox One Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Bundle and Elite Controller.
The number of Xbox One gamers who played Microsoft Studios-published titles more than doubled compared to 2014.”
Microsoft’s exclusive 2015 holiday games line-up: Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza Motorsport 6 and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has sold over 1 million units.
Xbox one is so far the best-selling console in Xbox console history.
Here’s some of the accomplishments by Microsoft in 2015:
- We released over 200 new features for gamers in 2015 including the New Xbox One Experience and the most-requested feature, Xbox One Backward Compatibility.
- More than 350 games were released or were made playable on Xbox One in 2015 (including first and third-party, ID@Xbox and Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles), fueling progress toward our goal of delivering the largest games catalog ever on Xbox.
- Xbox gamers earned over 4 billion achievements and racked up a total Gamerscore of over 77 billion in 2015.
- In 2015, the Xbox community cast over 6.5 million votes on Xbox Feedback.
- Since Xbox One Backward Compatibility released on Nov. 12 with more than 100 playable titles, global Xbox gamers have logged more than 15 million hours playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One.
- As Yusuf Mehdi shared today, we’ve seen strong engagement with the Xbox App on Windows 10 PCs, with over 6.6 million hours of Xbox One games streamed to Windows 10 PCs. And gaming continues to grow on Windows 10 – in 2015, gamers spent over 4 billion hours playing PC games on Windows 10. In the six months since Windows 10 launched, it has already become the second most popular OS for Steam players behind Windows 7.
- Minecraft is the number one grossing paid game in the Windows 10 store, a spot it has occupied since it launched in July 2015. Nearly 1 million Minecraft players have taken advantage of the offer to get the Windows 10 version free if you already own Minecraft for PC.
Nichols revealed release dates, platforms of their 2016 line-up:
- Gears of War 4 (Xbox One) – Multiplayer Beta in Spring 2016/Launch in Fall 2016
- Quantum Break (Xbox One) – April 5, 2016
- Halo Wars 2 (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Fall 2016
- Crackdown 3 (Xbox One) – Multiplayer in Summer 2016
- Fable Legends Open Beta (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- ReCore (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Sea of Thieves (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Gigantic (Xbox One & Windows 10) – 2016
- Killer Instinct: Season 3 (Xbox One & Windows 10) – March 2016
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Xbox One & Windows 10) – Spring 2016
- Cobalt (Xbox One, Xbox 360 & Steam) – Feb. 2, 2016
You don’t see Scalebound on here, because it was pushed to 2017.
Which games are you looking forward to playing? let us know in the comments.
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Source: Xbox.com