3) Halo 5

Speaking of a trans-media strategy, Steven Speilberg alongside 343 Industries general manager Bonnie Ross made a short pre-recorded appearance at the XBOX event to announce Halo TV. Although, his role in the production is unclear it seems that this may be tied into the next Halo game. As we all know 343 took over the Halo franchise from Bungie, which is now working on their new IP Destiny. At the time of the Halo 4 release, Bungie did announce that this was the beginning of a new Halo trilogy. This coupled with job postings on 343’s website in July 2012 to work on the “…next generation of game visuals in the Halo universe” points to a brand new Halo game for XBOX One.

4) Gears of War 5

Continuing the theme of fives, a new Gears game may just come to the next generation. As an old franchise that has been exclusive to the XBOX it has become one of the flagship games for the 360. When first released it changed how 3rd person cover based shooters were played, and went on to influence many 3rd person shooters, most notably Mass Effect. When XBOX One does launch it will need the recognizable and unique brand of Gears of War to help push sales. However the game remains unconfirmed and previous developers EPIC Games and People Can Fly have suspiciously remained quiet on the subject. Not being a huge fan of the Gears series, I will admit that co-op chainsaws has a certain nostalgic appeal to it.

5) Forza Motorsport 5

With yet another five, Forza Motorsport 5 is confirmed to be in development by Turn 10 Studios. The confirmation happened live during the XBOX event alongside a stunning CG trailer. Currently not much else is know about the newest installment of racing simulation franchise. Forza was Microsoft’s response to Sony’s record selling Gran Turismo. It was recently reveled that Gran Turismo 6 would be heading towards the PS3 instead of the PS4. This may be because PlayStation is releasing Driveclub on the PS4 and does not want to detract sales. They may also wish to release a much more polished and impressive Gran Turismo 7 for the PS4 so that it may fully utilize the systems capabilities. And of course nothing sells consoles like special edition bundles.