While PlayStation has the great exclusive products, the Xbox Game Pass, the backward compatibility and the live streaming service for multiplayer titles are the biggest selling points for Microsoft’s Xbox console.
Of this backward compatibility is probably the most important – Game Pass relies on, and this is a big reason why people stick to the same console – to make sure their libraries of old games are still functioning.
But even with a robust backward compatibility program, only a few games from outside the previous generation still work. According to Microsoft’s own website, only 38 out of 997 games from the original Xbox Console and 477 out of 2154 from the Xbox 360 are functional on the Xbox One or the recently released Xbox Series X.
On top of that, only a few, specifically about three dozen or so, and many of them first party, ‘improved’ to use the current hardware. The list has not grown much in the last few months since the release of the new console, and recently Jason Ronald, director of project management for Xbox Series X, talked about why.
Talking to Lords of Gaming about the challenge of adding backward compatibility for older games, Ronald says he would like to add more games to the program, but they now face challenges that will slow down rather than speed up new inclusions:
‘We want to bring more matches to the program, but it’s getting harder and harder. First, can we technically make some of these games work? But more often than it is now, these developers or publishers in some cases do not even exist anymore. Or, there are licensing agreements, or maybe a developer has plans for the franchise, so that’s definitely a challenge.
I would definitely say it’s getting harder, [but] we would like to bring more games to the program. I can not commit to any specific games or [confirm whether] we’ll be able to add more games in the future, but it’s definitely something we’re working on, we’re trying to do what we can, but I’ll definitely say we hear the feedback. ”
Getting games made before 2012 or so to work can be difficult these days, even with robust computers, let alone consoles, due to software issues. Emulators can sometimes solve this, but often come up with their own problems in the process and are known as memory and CPU intensive.
One solution Microsoft is using is to build their systems that can work in different titles, regardless of the developer, such as Auto HDR and the recently released FPS Boost. The latter, however, requires developers to work with Microsoft to launch the new updates. As such, it is currently only functional for five titles (“Far Cry 4” and “Watch Dogs 2” are the largest), but is expected to expand to a range of titles in the coming months.
The men of Digital Foundry researched the five titles that received the FPS boost and look very impressed. Check out their analysis below: