Microsoft’s Xbox XFRIENDS tournament is kicking off, said its Sales & Marketing Director for Greater Asia, Nelson Allen during the launch of FIFA ’13 in Singapore today.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” he said of XFRIENDS. Though official marketing for the campaign is scheduled to start only today, over 2,700 gamers have already signed up in anticipation of winning a total of USD10,000 in cash as well as a unique gold-plated Xbox 360 console. A total of five Xbox 360s will be given out as prizes, one for each participating countries in Asia – Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and India.

The competition will see players getting a specific number of achievements within a two-week period per game. The eight games of XFRIENDS will be rotated so no one misses out on fully dedicating their gaming time to each one. Top players on the leaderboard reflected on the XFRIENDS site will then get a chance to duke it out for their own gold-plated Xbox 360.

The games have a pretty balanced variety of genres – from fighting games to shooters – to even out the playing field. So you really got to be at the very least, decently good, in each of them in order to stand a good chance of winning the cashpot and the Dr Evil-inspired gold-plated Xbox 360.

XFRIENDS came about when Nelson sat down with a group of Taiwanese gamers. While none were able to tell him who was the best gamer of them all, everyone had something to say when asked if they were better than their friends.

“We want to get back to the core gamer, and basically have a lot of fun,” said Nelson.

“That’s the spirit of XFRIENDS,” he finished. “Challenge!”

The Xbox XFRIENDS tournament is currently ongoing, with FIFA ’13 being available as part of its lineup until October 9 2012.