Xbox Continues Pro-Consumer Moves With More Backwards Compatibility
Yeah, I know, the headline isn’t really surprising for anyone who’s been keeping up with Microsoft’s moves leading into the next generation, but they seemed to have just placed one of their final cards on the table and opened the proverbial flood gates. As the company has made clear with this morning’s announcement Xbox will now be moving forward as a single platform, providing every possible reason for anyone who’s still holding onto their older hardware to completely jump ship and board the next-gen hype train.
Countless games spanning all four Xbox generations will be able to run natively on the newest Series X|S, allowing older players to take advantage of cloud saves (which were previously blocked behind an Xbox Live Gold membership) and giving older titles the upgraded power of the new consoles to run better than they ever have before. Higher framerates and the new Auto HDR feature give an updated look to games that were released even before the inception of HDR. Compatibility Program Lead, Peggy Lo, doesn’t explain how exactly these features will work but does say:
“…since Auto HDR is enabled by the console’s hardware, there is absolutely no performance cost to the CPU, GPU or memory and there is no additional latency added ensuring you receive the ultimate gaming experience”.
This comes just about a month before the next-gen hardware is scheduled to drop, and continues to cement Xbox as the consumer-friendly option. Sony has been tight-lipped about almost any and all details regarding the PlayStation5, and what little we have heard doesn’t seem to do much for consumers (anybody else buy a useless PS5 camera?). I mean, imagine turning on your PlayStation5 a month after launch and decide to play the original Little Big Planet. There are plenty of amazing games that are stuck in the past, forcing us to dust off our old consoles just to experience them.
It’s not the end of the world to dig through your closet for some old hardware, but providing an avenue for older titles to live on in more visually appealing ways provides them opportunities to be discovered by new players. If more corporations in the games industry take Xbox’s lead we won’t ever need to jump through hoops just to play Peace Walker again. Imagine…
- a mcflyy joint
SOURCES.
- Lo, Peggy. (2020, October 13). Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S Will Be the Best Place to Play 1000s of Games From Across Four Generations of Xbox. news.xbox.com.
