Ewan Rants: Xbox One Backwards Compatibility

Microsoft has announced a bunch of things nobody cares about, but they also announced something quite interesting indeed. Backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games. What this means is that you can play Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One, in essence, this is awesome, I'll be able to play Xbox 360 games without ever having to go downstairs to where my 360 is. It'll also allow me to stop using "My brother is on the Xbox" as an excuse to not play really terrible games for achievements.

Of course, if all goes well, Microsoft will make a lot of good games like Mass Effect, Rareware Games and The Elder Scrolls backwards compatible, I'm working on a list of games I'd personally want to see which will hopefully be up tomorrow.



Microsoft has a couple hundred games planned as of now, however for the beta testers only 18 to 20 games are playable, including most of the Rareware digital titles, Mass Effect, A Kingdom/World for Keflings and Super Meat Boy for now. with more to come in the future when it's all done.

This idea in essence is great, because there's very few good games out for the Xbox One right now, so why not pull out your 360 games and play them instead, render your Xbone useless. Why not just get an Xbox 360? Much cheaper, better and a lot more games out for it that are worth your while. Obviously the Xbox One has been out for only a year or so but there isn't that pops out at me and says "Oh my God, I can't wait to play this." Wolfenstein was OK, Minecraft, Advanced Warfare, Titanfall I can get on the 360, while graphically wise may not be as good, who honestly cares?

They would've stopped a large outburst last year if they'd said "Backwards compatibility is a possibility" instead of just saying "No." like they did. Xbox One probably would have sold more had they announced this earlier on, it just doesn't make sense to do this now of all times. Sure, you can talk to your 360 friends while playing 360 games, but not when playing Xbox One games. Okay then, what if I want to talk to a 360 friend while playing, I dunno, Massive Chalice?

Another thing, this backwards compatibility seems redundant at this point. Yes, it's nice to play 360 games on the Xbox One, but think about it. If most to all of the games are compatible then it's worth it, if not, then just keep your 360. It's like the Xbox 360 - Xbox game compatibility, yes, games like Max Payne are compatible, but then you have fantastic games like Metal Slug 3 not compatible.

We also have to take into account the fact that a lot of the publishers and companies of these games have either shut their doors or are no longer around, examples of which being THQ and Pandemic. Microsoft needs to add new code to make them work, which means they'll need permission from all third party publishers, first party will be on, but for third party games like Darksiders 2 (THQ) things may be questionable.

Of course I hope it works, but it's a matter of:

- How many games are available
- Third party titles being compatible
- Any new features/graphical enhancements to the games

I doubt the third one will happen, seen as though most of the games are fairly old, some of them have knocked their online off like Chromehounds. Xbox stated that all 360 launch titles will be on, Chromehounds was a launch title, does this mean their online is coming back? If so, we can get the achievements for the online mode again.

Microsoft have given us more questions than answers on this one, but I hope it works, I really do. If not, we can always just use our 360's.