WHY DON’T XBOX 360 GAMESWORK ON XBOX ONE ?

WHY DON’T XBOX 360

GAMES WORK ON XBOX ONE ?.

Why backwards compatibility is too forward-thinking

  What’s the story ?

Like with all console transitions

your switch from Xbox 360 to Xbox

One won’t be entirely painless.

The biggest pill to swallow is that

your library of Xbox 360 games

won’t be playable on Microsoft’s

next-gen console. Why? Because

the tech isn’t capable. As one lead

programmer at a key Microsoft

studio explained: "The hardware

between the Xbox One and 360

is so radically different that even

emulation won’t be an option".

   Why should I care ? 

Because eight wondrous years of  

   Xbox 360 games – featuring some

of the greatest titles ever made –

will suddenly be blocked from your

new system. But can’t devs port

the games themselves? Not unless

you want them to spend much of

their time working on old games

as opposed to new ones. “There

are some major hardware and

code design issues to take into

consideration before tackling a

project like this,” says our source.

   What happens next ? 

Looks like we’ll have to bite the

bullet. Our source says “there’s little

chance” of backwards compatibility

ever coming to Xbox One. “Getting a

studio to port the code would be a

reasonable task, but it would take

time, especially if they didn’t write

the original game.” That’s not to say

you won’t ever see old games on

Xbox One – another dev told us that

“a fairly substantial bit of tech was

recently ported between consoles

in only a couple of weeks".