Xbox has established a new team dedicated to game preservation and backwards compatibility.
In internal Microsoft emails obtained by Windows Central, Xbox president Sarah Bond provided a general business update to employees. As part of those discussions, Bond mentioned the formation of the new team, noting that game preservation is “important to all of us at Xbox and the industry itself.”
She added that Microsoft is “building on our strong history of delivering backwards compatibility to our players, and we remain committed to bringing forward the amazing library of Xbox games for future generations of players to enjoy.”
To Microsoft’s credit, it does indeed have a solid track record with backwards compatibility. For several years now, the company has made a sizeable collection of popular original Xbox and Xbox 360 games available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout: New Vegas. These games can be played at no additional cost if you already own the disc or be purchased individually for a small price, generally in the $9.99 to $14.99 range.
By contrast, rival console makers PlayStation and Nintendo offer a lot less choice. While the PlayStation 5 can play PS4 games natively, titles from previous PlayStation generations are only available through a paid PlayStation Plus subscription. Similarly, Nintendo has only made games from the likes of the NES, SNES and N64 eras playable on the Switch through its premium Switch Online service. On both platforms, you aren’t given the option to simply buy individual games to play.
Of course, Microsoft also isn’t perfect in its game preservation efforts. Most notably, the company’s Xbox 360 Marketplace will shut down this July, jeopardizing games that aren’t yet backwards compatible. Xbox’s all-digital Series S and rumoured digital-only Series X refresh also contribute to reduced game ownership and preservation.
But on the whole, the video game industry has done a notoriously poor job of preserving games. While many older books, films and TV shows are available through streaming or physical media, older games are often difficult, if not impossible, to access outside of fan-driven emulation efforts.
Per a 2023 study from the Video Game History Foundation, 87 percent of games from before 2010 aren’t available on modern consoles in the U.S. To put that into perspective, the organization noted that even silent films from the 1920s are more readily available than most games.
It remains to be seen what Xbox’s new game preservation team will do beyond, presumably, expanding backwards compatibility to its next console. On that front, Bond noted in the email that Microsoft is “moving full speed ahead on our next generation hardware, focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation.” Microsoft publicly teased the console in February, but concrete details have yet to be provided.
For now, the company is set to hold its annual Xbox Showcase in June, with The Verge reporting that the event will take place on June 9th. This will coincide with Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest and is expected to provide updates on the likes of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed and Activision Blizzard titles like the next Call of Duty. Gears 6, the next game from Vancouver’s The Coalition, is also rumoured to be revealed at the event.
Image credit: Xbox
Source: Windows Central
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