Since the era of the Xbox 360, Microsoft has kept the idea of backward compatibility a priority for its evolving hardware. While this generation’s Xbox One system took some time to initiate the archives of fans, the new Xbox Series X will have a congressional library’s worth of games available at launch that you can pull from your shelves.
On the Xbox news site, Jason Ronald, Director of Program Management for Xbox Series X detailed its advancements ready for the new hardware’s launch.
Backward compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game. This means that all titles run at the peak performance that they were originally designed for, many times even higher performance than the games saw on their original launch platform, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality. Backwards compatible titles also see significant reductions in in-game load times from the massive leap in performance from the NVME SSD.
Games from previous generations of Xbox will also be making use of system implemented features such as HDR lighting effect and ability to utilize the quick resume. Some title’s framerates will perform better going from 30fps, 60fps, to 120fps. All of this is being done internally by Microsoft tech teams requiring little to no resource from the original developers of the old games.
As the compatibility list is still being added to internally by Microsoft, those looking to get an Xbox Series X later this year can expect to see a rundown of title availability closer to system launch.
