Xbox One Will Be Backwards Compatible

It actually happened. The biggest flaw in this generations consoles, in many people’s eyes, was that both consoles never had backwards compatibility. It seemed like a silly decision, especially because the prior generation had made this possible. For many, those old consoles and their games were either traded in, or sat and collected dust as newer consoles and games began to see more and more use. And now, all of those games that you’ve purchased for your 360 will play to your Xbox One for no extra cost this holiday. That’s right, Xbox One is going to be backwards compatible.

Starting sometime this holiday, an exact date was not given, approximately 100 titles will become backwards compatible with the Xbox One consoles, with more to come in the future. There may be a bit of a wait if there’s that one game in mind that you’re just itching to play again on the Xbox One, but with 100 titles at launch chances are you’ll have one or two of them. And if you already purchased the game on the 360 it will automatically work on the One without having to repurchase it again. The games will work whether you purchased it digitally, or if you still have the disk lying around you can just pop it into the console – both will work.

But Microsoft didn’t stop there, the 360 titles will be enhanced with Xbox One features. I doubt that this means graphical enhancements will be coming, we’ve had to pay for remastered versions thus far, it’s more than likely that they’ll be identical to what we remember. What we did see was Xbox One’s voice control features at work as the player began to record themselves playing Mass Effect. For anyone who enjoys Twitch, this is great news. Expect things like snap, and voice control to work behind the scenes with the 360 games. And you will be able to play multiplayer with people on the Xbox 360 from your Xbox One.

If this isn’t enough to get you excited. The head of Bethesda also announced that Xbox One consoles will also be able to play mods that have been downloaded onto your PC – thanks to Windows 10. He mentioned this specifically in regards to Morrowind, and backwards compatible games; more specific details will obviously be released in the coming days. Until then it looks like we’ll have backwards compatible games, with mods, on console…

We’re only about an hour in to the Xbox Conference and I’m not sure if there’s a way Microsoft can top this. It’s one of the most asked for updates to the consoles since it came out and now it’s coming. But we’ll just have to see what else they have up their sleeve this week; so make sure to keep tuned to LTG for all of your E3 gaming news.