‘Retro Classics’ Raises Questions About The Future Of Xbox Backwards Compatibility
Xbox Retro Classics was a nice surprise when it landed at no extra charge on Xbox Game Pass earlier this week, and we’ve been having a ton of fun with loads of retro Activision games that were never expected to be playable on Xbox.
However, with this program being streaming-based courtesy of the fine folks at Antstream Arcade, it raises questions about the future of Xbox backwards compatibility – especially considering a recent quote by Team Xbox.
On Wednesday, when Xbox Retro Classics first showed up, the official description on Xbox Wire described the service as being “a step in our commitment to game preservation and backwards compatibility”. Here’s a look:
“This initiative is a step in our commitment to game preservation and backwards compatibility, allowing players to experience many timeless games on modern devices.”
This seems pretty notable, at least to me. Firstly, there’s a suggestion here that Xbox backwards compatibility could expand way beyond the current selection of original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles in the future, potentially making thousands of games from the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s (and beyond) playable on Xbox consoles.
With this, Xbox could easily boast the best backwards compatibility suite the console world has ever seen, far surpassing anything that Nintendo and PlayStation are able to offer. Sure, Antstream is available on PlayStation as well, but this whole Xbox Retro Classics initiative suggests Microsoft has even more of a keen interest in the program.
That’s also where more questions lie, though. If Xbox is calling a streaming-based service a “step in our commitment to game preservation and backwards compatibility”, does that mean we can expect less in the way of native downloads in the future? Also, it’s already been stated that Xbox has “reached the limit” of adding native original Xbox and Xbox 360 games to current consoles, so is cloud streaming how they’re going to get around this hurdle?
For what it’s worth, here’s what Xbox said after the final backwards compatibility batch in 2021:
“While we continue to stay focused on preserving and enhancing the art form of games, we have reached the limit of our ability to bring new games to the catalog from the past due to licensing, legal and technical constraints.”
We could see a situation where Xbox was to say, “look, we can’t add these OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games to backwards compatibility for all of these reasons, but we can stream them over the cloud for you via an emulation service”. Would that be feasible? Would it prove popular? I suspect it would end up being pretty divisive.
What I really hope doesn’t happen is that the next Xbox console only supports some Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S games via native downloads, and the rest have to be streamed via the cloud. There’s no suggestion that’s going to be the case, but Microsoft loves the cloud these days – and it would seem to be an easier strategy on the company’s part.
The good news is that Xbox has set up a “game preservation and forward compatibility” team inside of Microsoft over the past year, and they’re actively hiring for it right now. It remains to be seen how backwards compatibility will be implemented for the next generation of Xbox, but this group is clearly putting a lot of focus into figuring it out.
