Microsoft will stop making old games available on current Xboxes – and focus its attention on doing the same for the coming generation.
For years, Microsoft has been working to make games from the original Xbox and the 360 available on the current generation of consoles.
In keeping with that, it has regularly announced lists of games that are now available on the modern generation. It means that anyone with an old disc – or who buys them from the Microsoft store – can play old games, despite the fact the hardware is not immediately backwards compatible.
It has announced a new list of those games, which includes a whole set of fan favourites. They include a variety of Splinter Cell games from the original Xbox, for instance, and many more.
But that will be the last of those lists to be released, Microsoft said. Instead, it will be focusing on making sure that the next generation console it revealed this week is fully compatible with all the generations of Xbox that went before it.
Microsoft unveiled that new console – nicknamed Project Scarlett – for the first ever time this week. It showed off the futuristic new specs that will power it, as well as announcing that it would arrive at the end of 2020.
It also stressed that it would be working to make sure that the new console is as backwards compatible as it could possibly be. The new Project Scarlett Xbox will be able to play games from all the previous generations, it said.
What's more, the same will apply to hardware, meaning that current controllers will be able to work with the new console. And the company even suggested that players will be able to go up against each other – allowing someone playing Fifa on an Xbox One to play against someone playing the same game on the Project Scarlett hardware, for instance.
"We’ve listened closely to community feedback and respect the game libraries you’ve built throughout the last 18 years," it said in the blog post that announced the end of the backwards compatibility programme for Xbox One.
"That’s why we’re taking our work a step further and announced this week that thousands of games from all four generations will be playable on Project Scarlett. As such, we have now shifted our focus to help make the games you love playing on Xbox One compatible with future Xbox hardware.
"After this week, we have no plans to add additional Original Xbox or Xbox 360 titles to the catalog on Xbox One, but we’re excited to continue our work on Xbox compatibility across platforms and devices, which remains a top priority."
