Xbox One February game releases tap the Thief

While precious few in number, game releases for the Xbox One inside of February include some games that have the potential to be real heavy-hitters. We've got four games and one beta release – however that'll play out – with The Lego Movie Videogame, Plants VS. Zombies: Garden Warfar, Rayman Legends, and Thief. This is only the beginning – and we're only seeing the PlayStation 4 beat this list by a single game (one coming out tomorrow).

The following list could expand. While we're working with several sources here, Microsoft does not currently publish an all-encompassing list of games that will certainly be released, or we'd point you straight to it. Instead it's a mix of Microsoft's publishing and the developer choices on when to publish that we've got to work with, and we're seeing releases ramp up every month.

To begin we've got The Lego Movie Videogame. This game will be released on the 7th of February, featuring a cool 15 levels – suggesting there might be DLC action later on – and more than 90 characters. These characters will be from the film, inspired by basically every movie and comic franchise in history – or at least Lego history. This means we've got characters like Batman and the Ninja Turtles popping up alongside your everyday average fellow Emmet, the main character of this adventure.

In Plants VS Zombies: Garden Warfare you've got a spinoff title. Here instead of working with a tower defense model, you'll be working with 10 maps in three game modes of mutiplayer shooting. This game will be able to be played in 12v12 multiplayer mode – beastly! This game will also be coming with two modes not yet seen anywhere else to the Xbox One: one of which is cooperative split screen.

The other Xbox One-specific mode for this game is Boss Mode, a mode in which you'll be able to work with Kinect or the smartphone/tablet based SmartGlass to operate. For a PopCap title like this, traditionally mobile, this title is set to make use of more Xbox One-specific hardware than we've seen most titles use yet!

With Rayman Legends, users are asked to jump in on the now-classic title as ported to the Xbox One. This game has been ranked amongst the best games in its class for the PC, and here on the Xbox One it's extended. The Xbox One version of Rayman Legends comes with 10 challenges not found on any other machine.

The Rayman-based characters will also be different based on the version of the game you own. There's also an Xbox 360 version, one on Steam for PC, and a Wii U version. Gotta catch em all, we must suppose.

Finally there's Thief. This game will be released to both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 in the month of February (as well as PC). Here you'll see a demonstration of the game being played on a much, much larger platform than you'll be able to play it on with the Xbox One – but it'll give you an OK idea of what you'll be dealing with.

Finally there's Titanfall. You will not be able to play Titanfall on the Xbox One in full until March, but the Beta release will be coming inside the next few weeks. Sooner rather than later, as the Beta release must be made in time to catch any last-minute bugs before the game goes live for both PC and the Xbox One.

Titanfall – again – isn't a February release, but we'd be surprised if we didn't see a glimpse of it on the Xbox One before the full release is dropped. Stay tuned and keep an eye out!

UPDATE: As TwinStripeUK reminds us, Project SPARK is coming this month too!