Phil Spencer: Xbox 360 backward compatibility on Windows possible, but unlikely

By Brad Jones February 7, 2017

xbox backward compatibility windows 360 controller — 123RF/Sebastien Coell

At E3 2015, Microsoft dropped news that select Xbox 360 games would be playable on the Xbox One via backward compatibility. Since then, the library of supported games has swelled to over 300, and players are eager to see this kind of functionality introduced elsewhere in the company’s gaming empire.

Yesterday, Xbox head Phil Spencer was responding to queries on Twitter when he was asked whether backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games was ever likely to make its way to Windows 10. He responded with a realistic assessment of the work involved, but indicated that such a project wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Spencer stated that the difficult part of bringing Xbox 360 backward compatibility to Windows 10 would be the wide range of different hardware set-ups implemented by users. The Xbox One is a standardized system, meaning that engineers know what kind of horsepower they have to play with, but PCs can vary wildly from one build to another.

Games added to the Xbox One’s library of compatible Xbox 360 titles are tested extensively to ensure that the experience is just as good on newer hardware as it was in the past. As a result, players can expect a certain standard of performance, and Microsoft wouldn’t be able to offer that standard consistently on such a broad range of hardware.

Having stated the reasons why backward compatibility was unlikely to make its way to Windows 10, Spencer offered a hint of encouragement, according to a report from Gamespot. He said “never say never,” indicating that this long shot project might yet come to fruition, even if the chances are slim.

Offering up even a portion of the formidable Xbox 360 library could be a boost to Microsoft’s ongoing effort to carve out its own slice of the PC gaming market. However, management will no doubt want to consider whether the resources necessary to implement backward compatibility on Windows 10 could be better spent elsewhere.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.

Gaming

Microsoft will shut down the Xbox 360 Store next year

An image of backward compatible Xbox 360 games.

Microsoft announced today that it plans to shut down the Xbox 360 in 2024, an extremely disappointing move that's bad for game preservation.

The Xbox 360 Store, also known as the Xbox Live Marketplace, has been present on Microsoft's second game console in some form ever since it launched in 2005. In recent years, storefront shut down for older systems have become more common. The 3DS and Wii U eShops went offline in March despite player anger, while Sony planned to shut down the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita storefronts in 2021 before reversing that decision because of the backlash. Regardless, the loss of any storefront is a dour move for the video game industry, as some games are exclusively available to them and will be lost forever when the store goes offline.

Gaming

All Xbox home screens are getting a PS5-style makeover starting today

An Xbox home screen shows Starfield.

The Xbox home screen is getting a face-lift. Starting today, Microsoft will begin rolling out a freshly redesigned Xbox home interface across Xbox One, Series S, and Series X consoles.

If you're an Xbox owner, you're probably used to the consoles' current design that features a row of recently used apps at the top of the screen and a list of widgets below. Microsoft says it looked at user data and feedback from the Xbox community to create a redesigned experience that's more focused on discovery.