Here’s an interesting tidbit for the upcoming next-gen Xbox. The first-party games under the Xbox Game Studios banner, for at least the first one or two years, will be compatible with Xbox Series X and Xbox One.
In an interview with MCVUK, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty confirms this is pretty much the plan.
“As our content comes out over the next year, two years, all of our games, sort of like PC, will play up and down that family of devices,” Booty said. “We want to make sure that if someone invests in Xbox between now and [Series X] that they feel that they made a good investment and that we’re committed to them with content.”
So if you are not planning to jump into the next-gen just yet, the upcoming crop of Xbox games would still be playable on Xbox One.
It’s not to say that there won’t be Xbox Series X exclusive games, it’s more that Microsoft is defining what an exclusive game in a different manner. Launch games for Xbox Series X will be utilising that next-gen power, like Halo: Infinite, which will launch later this year for Series X and Xbox One.
“Our approach is to pick one or two IP that we’re going to focus on and make sure that they’re there at the launch of the console, taking advantage of all the features,” Booty added. “And for us that’s going to be Halo Infinite, which is a big opportunity.”
While this sounds good for consumers, there is one concern. That is the feeling that a game is parred down so it can have feature parity with the last-gen console, or the last-gen console port is just terrible with major features missing. We’ve seen examples of cross-gen games in the past, like The Crew, Shadow Of Mordor and the original Destiny on Xbox 360- each with varying degrees of quality.
But this is pretty much consistent with the current Xbox’s vision of allowing you play Xbox games- including old ones via backward compatibility– even if it’s not on the console.
Source: MCVUK