‘Xenia’ Team Issues Statement In Response To Xbox Backwards Compatibility Rumour

Last week, there was a lot of buzz around a report that suggested Xbox was in the midst of overhauling its backwards compatibility suite for original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles, with a suggestion they’d be getting improved features and expanding to PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming in the process – potentially to be announced in 2026.

That may well still be the case, but it seems at least one part of the report was definitely incorrect, which was a mention that the Xenia emulator team was working with Microsoft to make some of this happen. Xenia, for those who aren’t aware, is an Xbox 360 research emulator for PC (and as far we know, it’s the best emulator of its kind).

When the report hit the web a few days, a moderator on the Xenia Discord was keen to stress they weren’t working with Microsoft in an official capacity, and now a Xenia team member known as “JeBobs” has doubled down on this as well:

“Hey everyone, I just wanted to clear some confusion regarding a rumor that has recently surfaced online. The Xenia (and Xenia Canary, by extension) team is by no means associated with, nor working alongside Microsoft in any capacity. Microsoft uses their own emulation to provide backwards compatibility on Xbox One/Series consoles and as such has no reason to collaborate with Xenia, even if they decided to bring these titles to PC. Xenia continues to be a community-run effort that encourages and enforces legal emulation practices both in development and within this server.”

So, unless they’re misled or completing lying through their teeth (which seems unlikely!), Xenia isn’t involved in working with Microsoft on future backwards compatibility plans. That’s a shame considering the original report sounded very exciting, but as suggested in this message, Microsoft apparently has “no reason to collaborate with Xenia”.

Again, we’re not saying that original report was necessarily wrong – the person who shared those details has been correct on multiple occasions and had an unusual amount of in-depth information to share about the future of Xbox backwards compatibility – but perhaps their source has got some lines crossed somewhere and become misinformed. For what it’s worth, Windows Central’s Jez Corden revealed his doubt about the plans the other day as well.

Who knows where the full truth lies… but what we do know is that Xenia is denying any involvement in this.