Fans of game consoles, the change of generations of your favorite consoles is traditionally perceived ambiguously. On the one hand, there is progress and improvement, which cannot but rejoice, and on the other, inevitable expenses for new devices and accessories, as well as the inability to launch old games on new type of consoles. That is why Microsoft engineers developed and successfully implemented backward compatibility technology that allows you to run many games developed for the Xbox 360 on Xbox One consoles and the more productive S and X series.
How it works
The process of processing a game on a new generation console is, in fact, a banal emulation. And the code of each of the old games launched on Xbox One is executed in a natural environment - the x86 architecture. This was made possible thanks to the succession of generations (the Xbox One was nevertheless created not from scratch, but taking into account the achievements of the previous platform), as well as the high-quality processing of each bit of data entering the emulator. As a result, it turns out that in the backward compatibility mode, the game works the way its creators had originally conceived, without tripping over flaws that would inevitably arise when porting.
Of course, with this approach to data processing, the requirements for the processor as the main computing device should grow like an avalanche: the virtual environment itself does not differ in modest appetites, and then there are full-fledged sets of low-level instructions, multi-threaded instruction conversion, etc. But since Microsoft doesn’t regretted neither the money, nor the time, nor the energy for quality debugging of the whole process (there are more than a hundred people in the project’s testers alone), the old games for the most part are not just usually devoid of complicity boiling process such errors, but often look much better than on the original console.
Of course, this did not happen right away: in the early stages, many users noted that in some games the backward compatibility of the Xbox One is noticeably inferior to its predecessor. But the feedback has paid off: a lot has been taken into account, corrected, and at the moment the Xbox One can be called a two-in-one device, since most of what the Xbox 360 gamers provided is easily reproduced by the new generation of consoles.
When using Xbox One X or S consoles, you can run some games in Ultra HD resolution (for example, Gears Of War 3). In addition, many games launched on the X-Series console significantly exceed the quality of the graphics in their original versions, pleasing the eye with improved detail, more efficient processing of textures, as well as a significant improvement in the effects of reflections and shadows. Due to the active promotion of HDR technology, some developers are trying to introduce the capabilities of high dynamic range into the industry of game consoles, but at the moment this is fraught with technical difficulties and considerable amounts of funding to overcome them.
Available games
To date, there are more than four hundred accessible backward compatibility games for gamers, and this number continues to increase. Among them, for example, all parts of Assassin's Creed up to Rogue inclusive, several games from the Halo series, the Mass Effect trilogy, many games from the Star Wars universe, etc. A full list of backward compatibility games is available to users on the official website at xbox. com.
How to play
Any game on the Xbox One backward compatibility list runs the same way as the current ones. For a boxed edition, just insert the disk into the console drive, while digital copies are launched from the "Ready to Install" section. At the same time, the supported Xbox 360 multiplayer games provide gamers with the same features as the "classic" players: creating and transferring a team, chat and playing with friends.
Peripheral use
Unfortunately, the introduction of backward compatibility did not affect gaming accessories. The Kinect tracking controller, Flight Stick joysticks, steering wheels and other peripherals are not compatible with other versions of the consoles. Running a game developed for Kinect 360 on the Xbox One may work, only working with accessories from this console will not work. At the same time, an attempt to connect new devices to the old type console will also bring no results. The same goes for removable hard drives: HDD media from the Xbox 360 console cannot be used on the Xbox One.