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Microsoft Announces Xbox One Backward Compatibility

Posted by samzenpus on from the old-favorites dept.

dotarray writes: Mike Ybarra is head of Platform Engineering at Xbox, and today he told the gaming world all about one of Microsoft's best-kept secrets — after more than a year of saying it couldn't be done, the Xbox One really is backwards compatible, so you can play all your Xbox 360 games on your next-gen console.

5 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by WoodburyMan · · Score: 5, Funny

    From "DRM EVERYWHERE, required internet access, and no backwards comparability" to "No more DRM then before, offline whenever, and play all your old games". They should have called the Xbox One the XBox 180.

  2. Re:Why now and not at release time. by Totenglocke · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's not what this is though. If you heard their actual announcement, it's not backwards compatibility. What they're doing is that if you have a 360 physical game, you can redeem it (no details yet on HOW, sounds like you'll put the disc in the Xbone and it'll auto-redeem) a digital copy. So this will only work for 360 games that are on the Xbone's digital store (they're stating around 100 by Christmas).

    --
    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
  3. All your games by Translation+Error · · Score: 5, Informative
    The summary and article:

    you can play all your Xbox 360 games on your next-gen console.

    Ars Technica:

    Much like the Xbox 360's limited support for the first Xbox's games, more 360 games will be added to the backward compatibility list over time--and there's no guarantee that a favorite 360 game will ever be brought forward to work on Xbox One. Nonetheless, Microsoft promises over 100 titles to start, with hundreds more coming in the future.

    For some reason, I find the second quote much likelier.

    --
    When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  4. Re:Why now and not at release time. by unrtst · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course it's a bid for profit, whether immediate or long term. Why they thought it'd give them more profit has a bunch of reasons too, which may or may not pan out.
    * make people buy the new console for the new games - check, though that may not have got as much market as they hoped
    * hidden feature to later steal market share (ps4 lacks backward compat... which, IMO, is dumb... xbox can enable it easier due to less significant architecture changes).
    * As said below, this is NOT enabling all games to work. It doesn't even use your old game - it just uses it to verify you have it so it can get you a digital copy of the xbone version. This is not backward compat in any way - it's a port they'll give you for free, and only for ones where all the red tape is cleared and they have a copy (ie. AAA titles could refuse to port to force repurchase; small titles may not have the means; etc).

    AFAICT, this is smart, though misleading, marketing, and nothing more.

  5. Re:Whatever, I only play Pong by JMJimmy · · Score: 5, Informative

    These newfangled games are lame. I tried ET once, never again.

    It's probably a good thing because the article is misinformed. It's not ALL titles and you don't play the disc. You put the disc in and will be given a version you can download for free (presumably recompiled for x86). The only problem is the initial compatibility list is very sparse at ~100 titles with "more being added" which could mean another handful or hundreds but doubtful that you'll get all you games - especially those they think they can re-monetize.