Xbox One owners have a lot to celebrate this week. Not only was Halo 5 released, but Microsoft announced via Twitter when all Xbox One owners would be able to play Xbox 360 games on Microsoft’s next-gen console:
Xbox fans mark your calendars: @XboxP3 just revealed new Xbox One experience & back compat start launching Nov. 12 for all Xbox One owners
— Larry Hryb ☁ (@majornelson) October 27, 2015
Back at E3 2015, Micrsoft explained that not only was backwards compatibility coming this holiday, but it would be launching with 100 titles to play. 360 discs won’t play natively but they will trigger a download of a compatible file. Things like DLC will automatically download if it has already been purchased.
While this is exciting news, it is hard to predict whether this will have any significant impact in the Xbox One’s sales. Lest we forget that during the last console generation BOTH Microsoft and Sony abandoned backwards compatibility after initially including it in the first models of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
But there’s a still great deal of good that comes from this. For Xbox 360 owners, they can trade in their console toward an Xbox One (although we’re not endorsing that) without sacrificing their deep catalog of Xbox games. Also, this creates some much needed separation in the parity between Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
One thing is for sure: The team that Xbox head Phil Spencer assembled to seemingly manifest backwards compatibility out of thin air on the Xbox One should certainly be praised. Even Sony president Shuhei Yoshida was surprised that Microsoft accomplished such a “difficult” task.
Are you excited about backwards compatibility coming to the Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below!