WOW XBOX ONE Backward Compatibility Announced

[Scott Greczkowski]

Just announced at E3 that XBOX One will support your old XBOX 360.

This is a MAJOR announcement!

 

[yourbeliefs]

Yeah well, this would have been nicer about 18 months ago, although now this certainly makes the PS Now service look like a real piece of crap.

 

[king3pj]

It would have been nice to know this was coming at some point even if they knew it wouldn't be ready for the first couple years. I would have kept a few of the 360 games I traded in with my console if I knew this was coming.

Backwards compatibility is a really nice feature to have. I would argue that it's not nearly as important a couple years later as it would have been at launch though. People were still playing games like GTA V on 360 when the new consoles launched. There also wasn't a ton to play on the new consoles at that point so it would have helped fill the gap between games. Now the big reasons to have a new console are here though so there is much less reason to play 360 games.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Both my kids have their XBOX ONE and XBOX 360s hooked up. Soon they will be able to get rid of the 360's and just use the XBOX one which is nice. Now they will have an extra HDMI port so in the future they can plug a stream Stream Machine in it.

 

[Zookster]

Yeah well, this would have been nicer about 18 months ago, although now this certainly makes the PS Now service look like a real piece of crap.

If PS Now had only enabled people free access to a game on the PS4 they had previously purchased on the PS3 digitally, it wouldn't have been so bad.

With that said, after another frustrating attempt to watch a blu-ray movie on the PS4 last night, there's no way I'll ever part with my PS3, even if Sony made the PS4 fully BC. It makes absolutely no sense the basic DS4 controls for a blu-ray movie are different from those for Netflix (and from the PS3).

 

[yourbeliefs]

There's a few caveats to this BC...

First off, not all games are available immediately. Secondly, what about DLC? I bought a lot of DLC for Black Ops. Are my purchases going to be transferable to my One? Thirdly, what about full digital games that I purchased on my 360? I have a copy of Burnout: 3 that I got digitally. Will that be able to transfer to my One some day? Lastly, what about Arcade games?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that BC is a BAD thing, but I'm afraid people aren't going to wait to get all the facts and will be lining up to sell their 360s and then later get a rude awakening to some of these circumstances that they didn't think of.

 

[Ramy]

Most of the games so far are launch 360 games.

 

[king3pj]

There's a few caveats to this BC...

First off, not all games are available immediately. Secondly, what about DLC? I bought a lot of DLC for Black Ops. Are my purchases going to be transferable to my One? Thirdly, what about full digital games that I purchased on my 360? I have a copy of Burnout: 3 that I got digitally. Will that be able to transfer to my One some day? Lastly, what about Arcade games?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that BC is a BAD thing, but I'm afraid people aren't going to wait to get all the facts and will be lining up to sell their 360s and then later get a rude awakening to some of these circumstances that they didn't think of.

I was wondering about a few of these things myself. I am in the preview program so I have access to backwards compatibility but I sold all my retail 360 games and I don't own any of the limited games you can test it with now digitally. I really wish I would have been snagging all the 360 games with gold titles that have been offered now.

Here is a video Eurogamer posted that shows off how some of this stuff works. I really like how they just put digital copies in with your Xbox One digital games list for easy downloading. It's also cool that you can keep your saves from your 360 as long as they were backed up to the cloud.

It looks like DLC will work but peripherals like the guitar hero instruments will not. Also, this is just a a 360 emulator so all games should be compatible unless they require specific hardware accessories like 360 Kinect or instruments. It just comes down to getting permission from the publishers. Because of this the list of backwards compatible games should be much larger than it was for Xbox games on 360. The only publishers who would say no are those who are working on remastered editions of their games and they would look bad for doing so.

One kind of dumb thing is that you can't purchase compatible 360 games from the Xbox Live store on Xbox One. The instructions say that if you want to do that you have to do it from an Xbox 360 or Xbox.com.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Do you mind sending me an invite to the preview program? I have a few games and Arcade stuff so I'd like to try this out for myself.

 

[king3pj]

Do you mind sending me an invite to the preview program? I have a few games and Arcade stuff so I'd like to try this out for myself.

I'll send you an invite when I get home tonight. Keep in mind that the list of games currently available is really small though.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Xbox_One_Backward_Compatibility_Game_List

 

[king3pj]

With Gears Ultimate Edition getting me excited about the series again I hope Gears 2 and 3 get added to the backwards compatibility list soon so I can replay the whole series.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Microsoft explains how it got BC to work on the One. Bad news though: No Kinect games..

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/revealed-how-xbox-one-can-play-360-games-via-backw/1100-6428366/

 

[king3pj]

Microsoft explains how it got BC to work on the One. Bad news though: No Kinect games..

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/revealed-how-xbox-one-can-play-360-games-via-backw/1100-6428366/

The vast majority of Kinect games on 360 weren't worth playing anyways. I had a kinect on 360 and Xbox One and I still haven't really found a good reason for owning one.

At least on Xbox One the voice commands are useful. That could have been handled with a microphone built into the system for much less money than the fancy cameras that no one uses on the Xbox One's kinect though.

 

[bluegras]

how do you play xbox360 games using xbox one?

 

[yourbeliefs]

Here's a little overview of how it works currently.



And here's how Microsoft is pulling it off

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/revealed-how-xbox-one-can-play-360-games-via-backw/1100-6428366/

 

[WiCkeDuDe]

Bc was a big deal for me when I read it was coming out. I just hope the list of supported games grows

 

[yourbeliefs]

Of course the list will grow, because right now it's not even 1% of all the games available. Still, publishers probably aren't thrilled because it cuts off a revenue stream by allowing people to either bring their old version over or get the cheaper last gen as opposed to buying the "Remastered" editions which are typically just a HD touch up and maybe some DLC included. Really they just want people to abandon their 360s and finally buy a new One because sales have been lagging behind the PS4.

 

[WiCkeDuDe]

Agreed. It caused me to buy a xb1. I just wish all my 360 games would transfer so I could sell the 360 off.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I still have my 360, mainly because I have many Arcade games and because I spent so much money on Rock Band content that I can't just part with it. I know that Harmonix claims that purchased content will transfer to RB 4, but I'll believe it when I see it, along with the alleged old equipment compatibility. I'm not spending $250 for the privilege of playing 70+ more songs when I have a perfectly functioning old version that I only bring out when I'm in a musical mood and have a few drinks in me. The other issue is that the emulation isn't perfect yet, which has to be expected with software emulation. Hopefully they'll improve this, but according to these videos they have a bit of work to do