At Microsoft’s E3 conference the company announced plans to allow Xbox 360 games to be played on the Xbox One through software emulation.
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]Microsoft will be releasing Xbox 360 games that are backwards compatible with the Xbox One during the holiday season of 2015.[/toggler]
[dropcap size=small]W[/dropcap]ithout a doubt, the biggest announcement Microsoft made at this year’s E3 was their plan to make many Xbox 360 games playable on the Xbox One. The announcement took everyone at E3 by surprise, including Microsoft biggest rival, Sony. “It was surprising,” said Sony’s Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with Eurogamer. “I didn’t think it was possible. There must be lots of engineering effort”. Digital Xbox 360 games that were purchased on the Xbox Live Arcade, as well as the physical disc will eventually be playable on the Xbox One
According to reports, there are only twenty-two games that can be played on the Xbox One, but Microsoft plans to have more than one hundred games playable later this year. Eventually, Microsoft plans to have several games from the Xbox 360 released regularly for the Xbox One. The most popular games on the Xbox 360, like the Mass Effect trilogy, Halo Reach and Perfect Dark Zero will be released first this holiday season.
Microsoft executive Mike Ybarra also confirmed that “Microsoft won’t charge you to play the games you already own” and the digitally purchased games will automatically show up in your Xbox One’s library. Original Xbox 360 games will not work on the Xbox One, but rather it will give you the option to download an Xbox One compatible version of the Xbox 360 game you had inserted. Microsoft announced that developers and publishers of the Xbox 360 games will need to approve what titles work with backwards compatibility and Microsoft’s team of engineers will do the rest.
