Upon it’s unveiling last year, Microsoft’s Xbox One received harsh criticisms for its policy on backward compatibility and the Xbox One’s inability to play the games from consumers’ collections of Xbox 360 titles. This is changing now, though, after an announcement made earlier today at Microsoft’s E3 conference and presentation.
On stage, Microsoft Corporate vice-president Phil Spencer outlined the details of the latest feature to hit the Xbox One that will allow consumers to play their 360 titles. In what is being interpreted as a slap at Sony, implementation of this feature is being done in such a way as to directly improve on Sony’s PlayStation Now service. Specifically, consumers will be forced to download physical copies of 360 titles from their CD to the Xbox One’s hard drive, and owners of digital copies will be able to redownload their 360 games for free from the Xbox Live Marketplace. This system contrasts directly with PlayStation Now, which forces consumers to pay for a new copy of previous-gen games they already own in order to play them on their PS4.
The Xbox One’s new feature will not include all previous-gen titles immediately, but there are already over 100 titles set to be playable by Fall of this year. This and other details can be found explained in full on the dedicated page now on Xbox’s website.
Most promising about this news is that some titles may be able to make use of the Xbox One’s superior hardware, with a demo of Mass Effect shown at the conference doing just that. Needless to say, Xbox One owners are pretty excited. If you missed the full presentation, Kotaku, among other media outlets, has cut the relevant clip, seen below, from the entirety of the conference.
As of now, Sony hasn’t made any rebuttals, but their conference has yet to take place. It remains to see if they have any strong announcements, but it seems they’ll need something big to top Microsoft this year.