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We've been told plenty of times that Xbox is focusing heavily on backwards compability, but today Microsoft have really solidifed the extent on how much they've leaned into it, confirming with two weeks to go that almost all games currently playable on Xbox One from the entire history of the Xbox family of consoles will be playable on Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X at launch.
Jason Ronald, who is the Director of Partner Management at Xbox, today confirmed that following over 500K hours(!) of testing, that all games, including original Xbox titles, Xbox 360 titles and Xbox One titles that currently work on Xbox One will indeed be backwards compatible with the new consoles. In fact, the only Xbox games you won't be able to play from your library on the new machines will be those that use Xbox's ill fated Kinect accessory.
It's a huge milestone, with plenty of games getting dedicated next-generation patches, but that's also not to mention that many games that aren't getting the specific upgrade treatment will still benefit from built in enhancements, including doubling the framerate on selected titles and Auto-HDR which adds HDR even to games that were created before HDR was even a thing.
It's lovely to know those of us with a large Xbox back catalogue will have plenty of games to use on our new machines when the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X launch on November 10.
After 500K+ hours of testing, we’re are excited to share that all Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games playable on Xbox One today, except for the handful that require Kinect, will be available – and look and play better – on Xbox Series X|S at launch.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) October 28, 2020
