Xbox Backward Compatibility Coming to PC - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 22 July 2026 / 3,062 Views
Microsoft has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility is coming to PC. This makes it easier to play older Xbox games on PCs and PC handhelds, including ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.
Four original Xbox titles are now available to play on PC - BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy.
The Xbox team is working to being achievements to original Xbox games on both consoles and PC. the first four titles will be updated in the coming the months to with achievements.
Read details below:
Today, we’re introducing XBOX Backward Compatibility on PC, making it easier to play classic XBOX games from the past across PC and handhelds, including the ROG XBOX Ally and XBOX Ally X.
Your library is more than just a collection of games. It is your personal history of epic stories and treasured memories from the past. And as players, we don’t want to leave our gaming legacy behind even as technology continues to evolve and advance. We expect our library of games to move forward with us and to be able to play them in entirely new ways.
Rolling out today, XBOX Backward Compatibility on PC launches in early release, starting with four classic original XBOX games, now playable on PC and handhelds for the first time ever. This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time. And we are not just enabling you to play them on PC. We are also adding new features to make your gaming experience better than ever.
Players can jump into the following games on PC and supported handheld devices beginning today in supported regions:
- BLiNX: The Time Sweeper
- Conker: Live and Reloaded
- Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
- Fuzion Frenzy®
Each of these games is now available for purchase on PC and also included with all XBOX Game Pass plans. If you already own a digital license for these games on console, that license now carries over to your PC or handheld. Through the power of XBOX Play Anywhere and XBOX Cloud Gaming, you can now play these classic games from the past on your XBOX console, cloud, PC and handheld.
In addition to making these games available on PC for the first time ever, we’ve added new features to enhance the experience on PC while preserving the original gameplay. Players can customize graphics settings, including up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed display modes, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and more. These games also include customizable language and audio settings.
We plan to add even more features to XBOX Backward Compatibility games in the future. I’m excited to share that later this year we will be bringing one of the top fan-requested features to select original XBOX games on both console and PC: Achievements. The first four games releasing in preview today will be updated to include Achievements in the coming months.
Getting started is simple. If your PC or handheld meets the minimum system requirements below, you’ll be able to access backward compatible titles through the XBOX on PC app.
Minimum system requirements:
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 950 or AMD Radeon RX 550 or Intel UHD 770 or Intel Arc A310
- CPU: Min 4 Cores Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or AMD Ryzen™ Z2 A Processor
- RAM: 8GB
- OS: Windows 11
- Drivers and Versions: Latest Version as of January 2026
Recommended specifications:
- GPU: Radeon RX 68005 or Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti or Intel Arc A770
- CPU: 6 cores and 12 threads Intel Core i5-10400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme
- DirectX Version: DirectX12 API, Hardware Feature Level 11
- GPU VRAM: 8GB
- OS: Windows 11
- Drivers and Versions: Latest Version as of January 2026
XBOX Backward Compatibility on PC is another step toward preserving the games from the past and making it easier for you to enjoy and play more of the games you already own across the devices you use every day.
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Amazing news!!!
Glad to see my 400+ Xbox games are going to continue to be playable going forward!!!
Obviously been in the works for months but interesting timing given Gears 2/3 were just ported to PC last freaking week by the community lol
How we have NOT gotten a proper sequel (or even reboot) of Crimson Skies is a crime against humanity.
Maybe if they brought it to Steam... it could sell millions!
I swear if they announce that they're bringing back the BC program and include the likes of Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Project Gotham Racing, I'm gonna lose my mind!
I put in my disc for Stubbs the Zombie a few months ago only to find out it's not BC. Hopefully they add it some day! This gives me hope.
I don't understand what backwards compatibility has anything to do with it...
Will my Blinx Xbox disc run on PC?
Except this isn't streaming, its running natively
and we already know they have some kind of plan to add digital games to your account via using the physical disk
Emulation (my guess) is also not true BC.
Not BC as we knew it. BC used to usually require building part of the old system in the new (PS1 and PS2 on PS3, GCN on Wii, Wii on Wii U, etc.). And even if that is how it usually done in the past and such, Xbox seems to rely on emulation. Even the OG Xbox games on Xbox 360 were emulated.
Confirmed to run through the Xbox 360 XeFu emulator.
would be cool ...in order to do that, you'd have to have at least a DVD drive in your PC. Then inserting the disc will validate for your profile and you would be able to dl a digital version ala the way the XBO did for OG/360 disc games. Once in your digital library, you can then play on PC or portable.
Wait to see what Project Positron fully entails. That's the rumored "disc to digital" program. Part of the rumor is that your disc will still work even after the transfer, but, we gotta wait for the official announcement for full details.
But considering how incredibly tiny the base that uses an external drive for PC is, I doubt they'll put in the effort to make these discs playable on PC. So it most likely will only cover the console. If they bother with a disc drive at all next gen.
There's not even native external 4K disc drive support for PC anymore lol. Most we got is a standard Blu-ray drive. Literally 20 year technology.
Sounds logic to me.
At start and before - Xbox brand always was treated like PC.
Great news, looking forward to the updates and newest games.
Awesome! It would be great if they added achievement to OG Xbox titles on console as well, along with more games of course.
They are adding achievements to OG Xbox titles.
"I’m excited to share that later this year we will be bringing one of the top fan-requested features to select original XBOX games on both console and PC: Achievements. The first four games releasing in preview today will be updated to include Achievements in the coming months."
Oh nice! Gives me a reason to play Conker Live and Reloaded again.
I'll likely replay Crimson Skies once achievements are added. I remember really enjoying the game when it was new.
I was hoping this was a shadow drop, I wanted to play some Xbox games now on my PC. Anyhow, glad its finally happening. They should make a Xbox One emulator so we finally get Halo 5 on PC too.
This makes the disc to digital rumors make even more sense.
This is cool to get OG Xbox games on PC and adding Xbox Achievements is cool too.
Don't know if they will bother with Star Wars KOTOR since there are PC versions already.
Still, it would go beyond Xbox Achievements being added instead of no achievements or Steam Achievements.
Someone who already bought the Xbox version would be able to play it on PC too with Play Anywhere instead of having to get it on Steam.
Great news! Small list so far, but I hope games get added quickly.
Available where? Microsoft Store only or Steam as well? Microsoft has been releasing most, if not all, of their games on Steam as well for a long time now, but I'm not convinced this backward compatibility program is going to be available on Steam.
Exactly that. Classic catalogue basically, like Sony. Infact based on what it says is that Xbox games will have achievement support, others (more 3rd party) probably won't, which is exactly what Sony do with their classics.
All we need now is for Nintendo to not make you sign up to online to get their classics and over time we could get all classic games digitised.
This will likely be exclusive to the Microsoft store. But I'm sure they could bring some games to Steam. I believe each game is just an emulator packaged with the ROM.
So, this is probably how they will get Project Helix to be fully backwards compatible. It seems like they are manually porting the games over though, so surely that will take a lot of time.
I wonder if they’re working on some kind of AI that will port the games over…
Nah, they are just bringing their Xbox and eventually the Xbox 360 emulators to Windows.
They are probably bringing them out slowly for quality purposes and perhaps just something to hype up every time they add new games.
