We didn't know if we could do it, but we were inspired by our fans, and thanks to the dedication and determination of a group of brilliant engineers in our platform team who developed Xbox One Backward Compatibility, we made the impossible, possible. Previously, you said back compat wasn't possible on Xbox One. The program will launch broadly for fall 2015.
The Xbox One Backward Compatibility Beta is available starting June 15 for Xbox preview members.
However, referring to this functionality as an emulator is more accurate from a technology perspective since the Xbox One is not technically reading and playing the 360 game off of a disc. We call it backward compatibility because gamers can play select Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. If it's actually emulation, why are you calling it backward compatibility? Xbox One Backward Compatibility is an Xbox 360 emulator that runs on Xbox One and is used to play Xbox 360 games. What is Xbox One Backward Compatibility and how does it work? In a now-absent "Trending Questions" section, Microsoft acknowledge it was a new emulator that makes this work. There was a bit more information on that site about backwards compatibility, which now seems to have been removed. For disc-based games that are part of the Back Compat game catalog, gamers can insert the disc and the console "will begin downloading the game to your hard drive." (After the game downloads, users still need to keep the game disc in the drive in order to play.) The site notes that digital titles users already own are part of the "Back Compat game catalog" and will automatically show up in the "Ready to Install" section of Xbox One. Unfortunately, Microsoft's site does little to explain how the backwards compatibility works. I'm not a gamer, but I am interested in anything Windows-related that powers Microsoft and third-party hardware, including gaming consoles, work. Microsoft officials said that the backward emulation capability would be available for everyone this holiday season (meaning fall 2015). Starting today, June 15, Xbox Preview members can start testing the first wave of Xbox 360 games on their Xbox Ones. It looks like that emulator work panned out. (Official later stepped back from that statement.)
#DOES THE XBOX ORIGINAL EMULATOR WORK HOW TO#
Microsoft execs signaled at Build 2014 that Microsoft was investigating how to build an Xbox 360 emulator that would allow gamers to do just that. In some ways, Microsoft's backward-compatibility strategy isn't a total surprise. One of Microsoft's biggest announcements at the E3 show (so far) is that the company will provide the ability to run Xbox 360 games on Xbox One - theoretically making the Xbox One console more interesting to Xbox 360 holdouts who didn't want to abandon their existing game collections.