Second only to the lackluster hardware improvements over the previous generation, the lack of backwards compatibility has been one of the most disappointing things about the current generation of consoles. Microsoft and Sony shut down any hopes of backwards compatibility down before the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were even released, on the grounds that adding such a feature would be enormously difficult. That was two years ago, which is why nobody was expecting the big announcement that Microsoft made at its E3 press conference yesterday, the one where the company announced that the entire Xbox 360 would be coming to the Xbox One in the near future!
Remember the Xbox 360? Maybe you’re still using one! It’s arguably the best game console ever made, and almost certainly the best game console that Microsoft’s ever made. The Xbox 360 dominated sales and endeared game fans the world over in the last generation of game consoles, easily convincing consumers to “Jump In” to Xbox 360 over Sony’s PlayStation 3. Microsoft announced on Monday morning that the entire Xbox 360 game library is getting support on Xbox One. Put more simply: your old Xbox 360 games are about to start running on your Xbox One. That’s a lot of games! So many games, in fact, that it puts the Xbox One game library in the top position against the likes of Sony’s PlayStation 4 (in terms of sheer numbers, anyway). It means games like “Mass Effect” and “Red Dead Redemption” are going to be available on the Xbox One, and that’s truly exciting. It’s part of Microsoft’s ongoing initiative to make all your games available wherever you want to play them. Should you wish to play your Xbox 360 games on a Windows 10 computer, for instance, that’s now possible too – like Xbox One games, your 360 library will be available to stream to your Windows 10-powered PC through the Xbox One.
