It was announced at this year’s E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) Microsoft’s Xbox One console would be “backwards compatible” with the Xbox 36o titles. To this I am not full of joy like many of my peers are. Well, I say peers, but since I am no longer covering video games in a traditional sense, I will use that term loosely.
While I generally applaud backwards compatibility with home consoles with the Xbox One I am having a problem with what is being offered since it really isn’t backwards compatibility. While you are playing Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One, you aren’t actually playing the disc.
Here’s how it will work. Microsoft will have a shell of code that will allow the Xbox One to play an Xbox 360 game, sort of like an emulator. Rather than changing or altering the code of the Xbox One to actually play all Xbox 360 games, the software shell will be attached to digital versions of individual games to make them compatible with the Xbox One architecture.
Instead of downloading that game specific bit of code and enabling players to play their game disc, Microsoft is having players download a copy of the game to their Xbox One. Supposedly the add-ons and game saves will carry over, which is nice, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is actually backwards compatibility. It is emulation.
Your hard drive is going to fill up quickly if you have a large library of Xbox 360 games.
Here is what Microsoft says on their Xbox One website:
The digital titles that you own and are part of the Back Compat game catalog will automatically show up in the “Ready to Install” section on your Xbox One. For disc-based games that are a part of the Back Compat game catalog, simply insert the disc and the console will begin downloading the game to your hard drive. After the game has finished downloading, you will still need to keep the game disc in the drive to play.
So yes, you’ll need to download the full version of the game onto your Xbox One but still be required to have the Xbox 360 version of the game disc in the drive.
Not every game is going to be available, either right at the start or perhaps ever. The easy to code games will be first, then some of the more popular ones. Because many of these games were made available digitally it won’t be too hard to convert their code or wrap that shell around those games. I suspect, however, some of the earlier Xbox 360 releases won’t make it. There is no word on when and how many games will be available. “Over 100” titles will be available this fall but that could mean 102 games, only 3 of which you may care about. Then how long will it take to get the rest? How about titles like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? It’s a big title. And like, literally big. How will that conversion go? What about lesser remembered games such as Chromehounds? Bullet Witch? Quantum Theory? TimeShift?
If you have a lot of Xbox 360 games, why do you need to play them on your Xbox One?
The only reason I might have to use this is for Rock Band. I have a number of tracks that I’d love to see carried over to the Xbox One. Being able to play all my Rock Band games on the same console would be great. Other than that, wouldn’t it be easier to just keep the Xbox 360 you already have?