Microsoft: Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility Coming To Xbox One Later This Year

Microsoft has been making a number of great announcements at E3, but the one that strikes me as being the most notable is that the Xbox One will be gaining backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 titles later this year. Unfortunately, original Xbox titles are unsupported, but that’s not too surprising.

. @XboxP3 announces Xbox One Backward Compatibly. Play Xbox 360 games on Xbox One starting today for Preview members pic.twitter.com/P8ex2G0OO6

— Larry Hryb #XboxE3 (@majornelson) June 15, 2015

Here’s how this works: None of the games will be run off of the disc; instead, once someone puts a disk into the Xbox One, it will analyze it, and begin downloading the game for local use. If you previously had downloaded titles on your Xbox 360, those will automatically be carried over.

We’re sure there are going to be a number of restrictions here, such as any 360 game released after the Xbox One launched not being supported (at least for a while). This is a major move though, as many still have 360 games they’d like to revisit but don’t currently have a working 360 console and don’t care to get one. It’s a real pity original Xbox games are not supported, but again, it’s not surprising. In reality, we’re lucky enough to get 360 titles supported – I didn’t expect that to ever happen.