On Tuesday night, Microsoft held a special event to reveal their next console, the Xbox One. On Wednesday, they spent most of the day clearing up all the confusion stemming from the previous night's reveal. Now it's Thursday, and as things begin to settle down, new information continues to trickle out about their new console.
While Microsoft are billing the new Xbox - the Xbox One - as an all-in-one entertainment device for watching TV, chatting on Skype and playing the odd game, it turns out there's one thing the new box won't be able to do - play your old 360 games. Known as 'backwards compatibility', the feature has become pretty much standard for several iterations of consoles, particularly those from Nintendo - the 3DS can play DS games, the Wii U can play Wii games (classic Wii fighter Super Smash Bros. Brawl still gets played every Friday here at Everybody Plays HQ), and so on and so forth. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 aren't quite as straight forward, but both at least had the option for backwards compatibility to some degree - a selection of original Xbox games can be played on the Xbox 360, while the PS3 works with every PS1 game, but PS2 compatibility depends on the version of your console.
For the "next generation", though, it seems the Wii U will be the only console to be truly backwards compatible, as both the Xbox One, and the PS4 won't let you play your old games.
One of the lesser known features of the Xbox One - levitation.
Not doing the best to get himself over with fans, Xbox head honcho Don Mattrick explained the reason for the Xbox One's lack of backwards compatibility by declaring that "if you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards" during an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He claimed that only 5% of Xbox 360 owners used the feature, although we'd wager it would have been higher if they hadn't been so hit and miss with the support for old games. With a survey conducted before the reveal of the console showing 12% of people would be miffed at a lack of support for old titles, it seems the real reason for the lack of backwards compatibility is the type of processor chosen, as both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 use a fairly standard PC chip, which simply can't carry out the functions of the custom made processors of the previous generation - at least without reworking the games themselves. But while Sony at least have plans in place for a crazy streaming-over-the-internet service to let people play their old titles (although it's still unclear how it may work), sadly, it seems Microsoft have no such plans as of yet. The decision will affect downloadable games, too, meaning we'll probably have to wave bye bye to those 100+ downloadable games we've bought over the past seven years from the Xbox Live Arcade - which is also being scrapped for the new console...
In all, it's a somewhat disappointing decision, as upgrading your console shouldn't necessarily mean leaving all your games behind - after all, unless you've been on a special mission to finish your pile of shame, you'll likely have some unfinished business on the old box. It's also a nice feature to have during the early days of a new system, when releases are at their slowest and games are still being released on the older consoles, giving you something to play while the "next generation" settles down and development shifts across.
It may not be the best news in the world, but it's hardly one that should come as a surprise - with Sony having announced the PS4 won't be backwards compatible, Microsoft likely decided there was no need for them to go to the extra expense. As long as they can keep a steady stream of new releases for the Xbox One during the console's early days, we may not even notice the lack of backwards compatibility. Until then, we've got some furious playing of marathon role-playing title Tales of Vesperia to do - a seventy hour adventure we haven't even started yet...
