The list is, uh, interesting, right?
I was very excited when, at yesterday’s E3 Conference, Xbox’s Phil Spencer announced that “BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY!” was coming to Xbox One.
I thought that I’d be able to pander to nostalgia at a whim, grab any one of the 300+ Xbox 360 games I have sitting up my spare room and go to town without having to dick around changing wires/cables (first world problem, I know).
Hmm. Turns out, that’s not exactly what’s going to happen.
Retail 360 disks still won’t natively work with the current-gen system, but – for a selection of games – sticking the disk into your Xbox One console should trigger a download of an Xbox One-friendly version, and anything you’ve purchased digitally should start showing up automatically in your game library.
Remember: “backward compatibility” is not available to all users yet — you need to be a member of the preview program — and won’t necessarily apply to all games, either. But the good news is, we do know what games are available. Here, have a handy list courtesy of Microsoft:
- A Kingdom for Keflings
- A World of Keflings
- Alien Hominid HD
- Banjo-Kazooie
- Banjo-Tooie
- BattleBlock Theater
- Defense Grid
- Geometry Wars Evolved
- Hexic HD
- Jetpac Refuelled
- Kameo
- Mass Effect
- N+
- Perfect Dark
- Perfect Dark Zero
- Small Arms
- Super Meat Boy
- Toy Soldiers
- Toy Soldiers: Cold War
- Viva Piñata
- Viva Piñata: TIP
- Zuma
What do you think — a great starting point, or are there glaring omissions? Let me know what you think!