One of the most-repeated lines during and after Microsoft’s E3 presentation this year was, “Beyond Generations”. While it was referring to the company’s upcoming Project Scorpio, the codenamed new Xbox One model that will be significantly more powerful than the current one and the soon to be released Xbox One S, it did make many viewers wonder if any progress had been made in regards to backwards compatibility for video games released two console generations ago on the original Xbox.
Since last E3, Microsoft has made good on their promise to support Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One and in a recent interview with Wired, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, spoke about their backwards compatibility initiative and speculates on original Xbox games being included, however he also admits that it’s something they’re not working on right at this moment.
“Consoles created generations that effectively take your library back to zero; we’re trying to think beyond generations and say, how do you bring all the content that you purchased and love from this generation and move it forward with you?” he says about the company’s new mission. “I’ve talked about a desire to do the original Xbox backward compatibility. We’re not working on that right now, but it’s theoretically very possible. On the CPU side, we could figure it out. I think people should have access to the games that they love. I was an Atari Jaguar owner. Why can’t I play Tempest 2000 anymore?”
Backwards compatibility support for original Xbox games has been a feature many have wondered about ever since Xbox 360 backwards compatibility was announced. While it would be possible to implement, Microsoft is still in the process of adapting the rest of the Xbox 360 games library for Xbox One compatibility and most of those games are significantly more popular than those on the original Xbox.
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Further reading: Microsoft, Video Games, Xbox, Xbox One
