Everything to know about Xbox Series X backwards compatibility

In an Xbox Wire blog post, the Director of Program Management for Xbox Series X, Jason Ronald, went into how the upcoming console will play your older games better via backwards compatibility. He outlines this as being a way that Xbox is preserving your gaming legacy and how the Series X will play every single game better. Here is everything you need to know from the blog post.

How Xbox Series X backwards compatibility works

Ronald started by reiterating that all your current achievements, games, progress in those games, and accessories from Xbox One will be playable on Xbox Series X on day one. He went into how the Xbox team has spent well over 100,000 hours testing backwards compatible games and will have over 200,000 hours of testing by the console’s launch.

Every single Xbox One game playable on Xbox Series X

As of now, over 1,000 games are entirely playable on the Series X, with many more expected to be available on release day. These games will range from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics. Whether you own the game digitally or physically, the game will run natively on the console. The plan is to have every single Xbox One game playable on Series X, but because of testing, they are no longer committing to all of them being available at launch.

500 games from original Xbox and Xbox 360 support backwards compatibility

It is unknown if the current pandemic has had an impact on their trials. No new original Xbox and Xbox 360 games have been confirmed to be included on the Series X, but Ronald did mention the team is looking at adding even more games from the two consoles to backwards compatibility. There are over 500 titles from the original Xbox and Xbox 360 as of now, so there are some that could make fans happy to see brought back. When discussing the complications of bringing these games back, Ronald said, “Resurrecting titles from history often presents a complex mix of technical and licensing challenges, but the team is committed to doing everything we can to continue to preserve our collective gaming legacy.”

Backwards compatible games will take advantage of the Xbox Series X’s CPU, GPU, and the SSD.

The real benefit is, not only will your older games run on Xbox Series X, each will receive improvements on the newest platform. On the hardware side, backwards compatible games will take advantage of the Series X’s CPU, GPU, and the Solid-State Drive. This allows all of the games to load much faster than on their original console. To see a demonstration of how much quicker loading times are, check out the video below comparing State of Decay 2 loading times on an Xbox Series X compared to an Xbox One X.

Double FPS, 4K resolution, HDR support, Quick Resume feature

These games will also see better framerates, in fact, double the increase in framerates. Some games that ran at 30 frames per second on Xbox One will run at 60 frames per second on Series X. Games at 60 frames per second, will clock out at 120 frames per second on the newest console. Games will also render at their top performance possible, in some cases up to 4K. The Series X will also have an HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games that did not have it before. Adding HDR to these games will not affect the other performance of the game negatively.

The new Quick Resume feature with the Series X will let you put multiple games on standby and pick them right back up again later. This includes backwards compatible games and even applies to when you reboot the system.

That is everything you need to know about backwards compatibility on the Xbox Series X. There is still plenty of time for Microsoft to announce new features for the console, as they have already announced there will be an event in June that goes over the console specifically. Another event will be held in July for Xbox Game Studios games currently in development for the Series X. For these events and more, be sure to stay tuned in to Gamepur.