Xbox Series X to Launch with Thousands of Backwards Compatible Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 October 2020 / 3,183 Views
Xbox Series X director of program management Jason Ronald in a new Xbox Wire post said Microsoft's next generation console will launch with thousands of backwards compatible games.
Backwards compatible games will also be getting some enhancements. This includes games that don't support HDR getting native HDR support, improved loading times due to the SSD, and select titles getting a boost on frames per second from 30 fps to 60 fps or 60 fps to 120 fps.
"With more than 100,000 hours of play testing already completed, thousands of games are already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites," said Ronald .
"Many of us in Team Xbox play on the Xbox Series X daily as our primary console and switching between generations is seamless. By the time we launch this holiday, the team will have spent well over 200,000 hours ensuring your game library is ready for you to jump in immediately.
"Not only should gamers be able to play all of these games from the past, but they should play better than ever before. Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game.
"This means that all titles run at the peak performance that they were originally designed for, many times even higher performance than the games saw on their original launch platform, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality.
"Backwards compatible titles also see significant reductions in in-game load times from the massive leap in performance from our custom NVME SSD which powers the Xbox Velocity Architecture. As I play through my personal backlog as part of our internal testing, all of the incredible games from Xbox One and earlier play best on Xbox Series X.
"The team was not content to just rely on the increased hardware performance to improve your playing experience. The team developed new platform level capabilities to ensure all of your games continue to get even better.
"In partnership with the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR.
"In addition, the new Quick Resume feature was designed to not only work with new games, but it can also be enabled for backward-compatible titles. Quick Resume enables players to resume exactly where they left off, across multiple titles, ensuring gamers can get right back to the fun in an instant.
"All of these advances happen at the platform level and require no additional work from title developers."
"In addition to preserving the legacy of our loyal fans who have been with us since the beginning, we enable entirely new generations of gamers to play and enjoy the timeless games from our past while respecting and honoring their creators," he added.
"Beginning with Xbox One X, the compatibility team developed brand new innovations that could be applied to a hand curated list of titles to enhance them even further than what was possible when they were first created. Techniques such as the Heutchy method, which enables titles to render with increased resolutions up to 4K, or applying anisotropic filtering to improve the final image quality bring these classic games up to modern standards, better than ever before.
"With all of the additional power and advancements of the Xbox Series X, the compatibility team now has a veritable playground of new capabilities to innovate and push the limits of game preservation and enhancement.
"The compatibility team has invented brand new techniques that enable even more titles to run at higher resolutions and image quality while still respecting the artistic intent and vision of the original creators. We are also creating whole new classes of innovations including the ability to double the frame rate of a select set of titles from 30 fps to 60 fps or 60 fps to 120 fps."
The Xbox Series X will launch in Holiday 2020.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is great :) While having older games playing better on it is really amazing; I will probably spend the majority of time playing Halo Inifinite/Cyberpunk when this baby will come out!
At the very least, that should me we get access to about 500 OG Xbox and Xbox 360 titles. Along with 1500 of about 2500 Xbox One games. Seems like they're making incredible progress in a short period of time. The digital stores on all consoles are filled with junk, many games simply aren't a big priority.
if I had to guess they are most likely starting with what they know to be the most popular titles and working there way down. Would be the smartest way to approach it.
Is the emulation similar to the 360 with regards to the OG Xbox titles or will it be improved. The OG xbox source code leaked, but I have no way of knowing if they had that information back when they did the 360 emulation or if it was something they recently extracted specifically for backwards compatibility for the XSX.
@method114 - If we get 1500 of the most played X1 titles at launch, it seems like little else would really matter. However, I imagine any title that is on Game Pass and Xbox Gold also gets treated as a priority.
@Silent13 - I'm confused by what you're saying in case my response is irrelevant. I would imagine they're just using the same emulators and doing whatever tweaks are necessary to port those emulators. Which is why they suggested we are just getting access to current OG Xbox and 360 games currently available on BC.
unless this system takes a turn for the worse from now to launch this will be a day 1 purchase.
Nice! I especially like the part where you will be able to double the framerate of certain titles :-)
I still hope that Dying Light 1 also get s a Patch because of the near Release of Dying light 2.
Smart of microsoft. They know they can't keep up with sony's first party lineup, so they have those thousands of older games to make people happy with.
This was know every since they revealed the BC on XSX. But good to have more details.
That's great but I still think MS is putting to much focus on this. I mean it's a nice bonus and all, but lets get real now. Who wants to still play RDR when we got RDR2? Maybe I'm alone in this but it never even crosses my mind to play last gen games on a current gen console. At least not when there are plenty of quality new games coming out.
But Xbox department probably is smaller than Nintendo or Playstation and Xbox never really had a bigger budget than both. Still yes I agree this doesn't really impact much their game development.
And about RDR I would like to play it if they remastered to get some of the missing elements since I only played RDR2.
Is that your proof that Xbox have bigger budget than Playstation and Nintendo? That is very weak. That would at most show they have improved their budget (also show with the increase in number of studios). Still their studios are smaller and from what we know developing smaller games than Sony.
Why is Don asking for proof while he himself is making unsubstantiated claims with no proof lol. Don you don’t know what MS or Sony are working on nor the size of their teams.
Difference being that I was correcting the mix of Microsoft with Xbox team first, them Playstation having release a lot more big games than Xbox second, third I used probably while Goatseye is putting certainty so he certainly can back it up right?
And again your false pretence of neutrality but only take issues on the comments against MS.
He didn’t say MS has a bigger budget in terms of vs Sony or Nintendo he was simply saying since Papa Phil took over, Xbox has clearly had a budget increase. You’d see his comment for what it was if you weren’t looking at everything from a console warz perspective.
The point made against Playstation and Nintendo probably having bigger budget being that MS have increased the budget without meaning it now have a bigger budget than those does really make sense for you? And on your pretense will you all pretend that goatseye doesn't do console war?
He said Xbox got a bigger budget since The Xboss was inaugurated. You took that as a jab against Sony because that’s what you do. All I’m saying is not everything has to be an attack.
Nope didn't took as a jab, and he didn't post in a vaccum nor posted in the thread. He posted as a reply to either JRNATION who said MS have more manpower (which I corrected on differentiating MS and Xbox aren't the same thing, which I don't think you disagree) or to me.
Please show the logic on "Playstation and Nintendo probably have bigger budget than Xbox" "Phil Spencer got promoted and increased the budget". As a direct reply without stating that Xbox improved (certainly since they brought a lot of new teams) but haven't passed both, it is most likely meaning it passed reason why I asked for proof.
Then you came to the rescuse and with the general accusation of console war. I already gave the reasoning why Playstation likely have bigger budget (didn't even use that Playstation also have a much higher revenue and profit than Xbox) but having similar number of teams (after the acquisitions) but Playstation having released a lot more bigger games (some of MS studios have released big games, but a lot of the bought studios and some of the ones they already had didn't release games on similar scope) probably would have bigger budget. Do you disagree with any of it?
Not reading all of that. You misunderstood, just move on.
The competitors main focuses reflects in their hardware. Where Microsoft sticks to a more conservative and compatible solution, Sonys approach is the next step forward. That's why Sony can't do BC as easy as MS. It makes the teraflop discussion even more interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the outcome isn't what people expected.
