Confirmed: all Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games will be playable on the Series X at...

[Polycount]

In context: While Sony's plans for backward compatibility on the PlayStation 5 are somewhat underwhelming, Microsoft has been much bolder. The company previously stated that it hopes to have every single generation of Xbox games working on its upcoming Xbox Series X and S devices -- not just Xbox One titles. However, exactly how and when these games would become playable was unknown.

Fortunately, we finally have answers to some of these lingering questions, courtesy of a new tweet from Xbox Project Manager Jason Ronald. Ronald says that, after a whopping 500,000 hours of testing, his team can confirm that not only is just about every Xbox game in the world playable on the Series X and S, but they'll also be playable on launch day.

That's somewhat surprising -- it's not unusual for some key console features to roll out post-launch. Still, it seems the Xbox crew is committed to offering customers a compelling reason to choose the Green Team over the Blue Team this generation. While the PlayStation 5 will ship with limited backward compatibility, it pales in comparison to this.

To be clear, that's not a dig at Sony. We can't imagine how difficult it must have been for the Xbox team to accomplish this feat, and one could certainly argue that their resources may have been better spent elsewhere.

After 500K+ hours of testing, we’re are excited to share that all Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games playable on Xbox One today, except for the handful that require Kinect, will be available – and look and play better – on Xbox Series X|S at launch.

— Jason Ronald (@jronald) October 28, 2020

Nonetheless, Microsoft needed a compelling reason for PC players, in particular, to shell out money for their upcoming console (since they'll be getting all Series X exclusives anyway), and this might just be it.

Kinect games are the only exception here: they will not function on the Series X. That's no surprise, though, since the accessory never really took off anyway.

Notably, Ronald claims that past-gen games will also "look and play better" on the Series X, but that's a tough pill to swallow. Many older games have capped framerates and archaic engines, so we're unsure how the experience could possibly be noticeably smoother on the Series X. Naturally, we're not counting the handful of cross-gen Xbox One titles that are getting next-gen optimizations.

At any rate, this is overall good news for Microsoft fans. If you have a collection of old Xbox games lying around, consider dusting them off ahead of the Xbox Series X's launch on November 10, 2020.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87332-confirmed-all-xbox-xbox-360-xbox-one-games.html

 

[oldikes]

Clickbait or misinformed. All Xbox and Xbox 360 games WHICH ARE PLAYABLE ON XBOX ONE will be available on series X. That’s a decent subset of those games but far from all of them.

Journalism should be more informed than the average user...

 

[SantistaUSA]

Exactly! Not sure if was clickbait and or an honest mistake but like you said "Journalism should be more informed than the average user..."

The tweet clearly states "After 500K+ hours of testing, we’re are excited to share that all Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games playable ON Xbox One today, except for the handful that require Kinect, will be available"

Clickbait or misinformed. All Xbox and Xbox 360 games WHICH ARE PLAYABLE ON XBOX ONE will be available on series X. That’s a decent subset of those games but far from all of them.

Journalism should be more informed than the average user...

 

[Irata]

Well, that kinda sucks. I was expecting a better backwards compatibility than for XBox One.

 

[kiwigraeme]

How the hell to you squeeze 500k hours of testing into say 6 months ?- It must be a semi-autonomous process

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"Notably, Ronald claims that past-gen games will also "look and play better" on the Series X, but that's a tough pill to swallow. Many older games have capped framerates and archaic engines, so we're unsure how the experience could possibly be noticeably smoother on the Series X."

Is the author completely unaware that emulators are a thing? There's really not much excuse for not knowing that games emulated on newer systems can be made to take advantage of modern processing power by rendering higher resolutions, with additional AF and AA, as well as running at more stable framerates then the original hardware.

Also, "tough pill to swallow" isnt really appropriate given the context. That is usually used to describe a deal with significant downsides for the interested party, significantly upgraded play quality is the exact opposite of that.

"To be clear, that's not a dig at Sony. We can't imagine how difficult it must have been for the Xbox team to accomplish this feat, and one could certainly argue that their resources may have been better spent elsewhere."

Better spent? Backwards compatibility has been a major selling point of multiple consoles. The Wii used it to great success, the PS3's sales fell off a cliff once they were removed, and of course the PS2 used backwards compatibility to wedge itself into an already present market to great success, giving them the large initial playerbase to attract third party exclusives.

Add this in with the clickbaity "ALL GAMES WILL WORK" title and I'm beginning to wonder what content mill shoved this article out.

 

[psycros]

"That's no surprise, though, since the accessory never really took off anyway."

Maybe not as an actual game peripheral but it was amazingly popular as a hackable VR tool.