We’re just two weeks away from the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S console, and we just posted our unboxing of the flagship Series X this morning. If Microsoft previously detailed the launch lineup for its new consoles, Xbox Director of Program Management Jason Ronald confirmed this morning that all existing backwards compatible titles will run on day one the Xbox Series X|S, except for the few that require Kinect.
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
According to Ronald, the Xbox team has already spent over 500K+ hours to test existing Xbox One, Xbox 360, and OG Xbox backwards compatible games on the new consoles. All these back compat games will run better thanks to the powerful CPUs and GPUs, and all back compat games will also benefit from an Auto HDR feature that will them look better on compatible TVs and monitors.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Kinect accessory won’t be supported on next-gen Xbox consoles, so Kinect games won’t run on Xbox Series X|S. If you want to keep using your Kinect and play Kinect games, you’ll need to keep your Xbox One console for the time being. Microsoft also isn’t adding any new Xbox or Xbox 360 games to backward compatibility, the ones that have been available for Xbox One are what you’ll get with Xbox Series X|S.
Microsoft will continue to support the Xbox One family of consoles after the launch of the Xbox Series X and Series S, and the company also announced that it plans to drop the Xbox Live Gold requirement for cloud saves on the Xbox 360. This will allow Xbox 360 owners to upload their game saves for backwards compatible games to the cloud and pick up where they left off on the Series X|S when the new consoles will launch on November 10.
