As Microsoft tries to downplay the effects on its gaming business of cutting 3,200 jobs and four studios, Xbox is rethinking its whole strategy even if the more recent comments from inside the house still sound confused at best. Don’t worry though; old Xbox games are coming to PC.
Via Xbox Wire, the company has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC, a surprise program that aims to bring ‘classics’ – more on this below – to PC and handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally for the first time ever. The emulation effort also includes features like “graphics settings, including up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed display modes, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and more.”
The first batch of games includes four oldies you may or may not have played before: Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy. Though there are very vocal voices out there when it comes to gassing up games like Crimson Skies, these aren’t system sellers. Still, we have to respect the effort, especially at a time when everyone is selling remakes and remasters while making old releases hard to buy and play. Earlier this generation, Xbox’s backwards compatibility project was one of the brand’s biggest strengths, so it’s nice to see it revived and evolved in some way.
According to the announcement, “each of these games is now available for purchase on PC and also included with all Xbox Game Pass plans”, with the separate purchase prices sitting at $9.99 (regional prices may vary). “If you already own a digital license for these games on console, that license now carries over to your PC or handheld,” so that’s also neat. They have cloud support, too.
“We plan to add even more features to Xbox Backward Compatibility games in the future,” Jason Ronald, VP of next generation at Xbox, teased. In fact, these first four games will get achievements in the coming months. The sudden and half-baked arrival of this first batch makes me think that, even if the push is well-meaning, this is another “break in case of emergency” fast reveal, like last week’s Bethesda roadmap.
It’s unclear if this move signals a return to the backwards compatibility efforts for Xbox consoles as well, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Elsewhere, it’s unclear if Sony’s PlayStation 6 will even have a disc drive to play games from previous generations after it was revealed the company would drop physical game releases entirely starting in 2028. Platforms like GOG are still trying to fight to preserve all sorts of games, though.
