One of the biggest announcements to come out of this year’s E3 was the Xbox One’s new backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games. With several Xbox 360 games already playable on the Xbox One and over 100 already announced for backwards compatibility by the end of the year with many more expected in 2016, this new feature is a boon for game developers and publishers who were concerned about players abandoning their Xbox 360 games after jumping to the latest console generation.
Ubisoft is one such company who has already praised Microsoft’s new initiative. In a post-earnings financial call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot claims that this new functionality is great for video game players and the industry as a whole and said that, “It’s good news for gamers that Microsoft was able to work on the compatibility aspect. They expect to come with 100 titles quite quickly, so that’s really good news.”
Yves Guillemot specifically mentions Splinter Cell as one example of a video game franchise that will benefit from this new initiative as its titles are completely unavailable for play on Xbox One.
While most recent Ubisoft games have been released on both Xbox One and Xbox 360, the company has a massive back library of older games that are only on the 360 and could potentially sell very well once exposed to a new generation of gamers who didn’t have Microsoft’s last generation video game console.
To implement the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility, Microsoft implemented full Xbox 360 emulation on the console, something the company hasn’t tried before. This emulation not only allows players to play Xbox 360 games but it also imitates the Xbox 360 operating system as well.
Are there any Xbox 360 games that you would like to see enabled for backwards compatibility on the Xbox One? Let us know your wish list in the comments below.
Further reading: E3, E3 2015, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Video Games, Xbox 360, Xbox One
