Microsoft ends Xbox One Backwards compatibility efforts to focus on next-gen

The Xbox One’s killer feature is the platform’s Backwards compatibility, a feature which enabled many Xbox and Xbox 360 titles to play best on Xbox One and Xbox One X, with the X offering graphical enhancements in the form of resolution boosts, increased framerate stability and other minor visual tweaks. 

Now, Microsoft’s focus is shifting to their next generation “Scarlett” platform, which Microsoft intends to be backwards compatible with Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles, offering four generations of game compatibility.   

The focus of the Xbox One Backwards compatibility team is now shifting to the Xbox Scarlett, ensuring that all games which worked on Xbox One will work on Microsofts next-generation hardware. This means that no new Xbox or Xbox 360 titles will be coming to Xbox One, but thankfully, this announcement comes with 31 new Xbox One backwards compatible titles, bumping Microsoft’s Backwards compatibility game count to over 600 Xbox classics. 

Microsoft has confirmed that Scarlett will release with an optical disk drive, making it likely that backwards compatibility will work just like Xbox One, where original game disks can be used to access digital downloads of backwards compatible titles. Backwards compatibility is expected to be a key feature for the next generation of consoles, as both platform holders will want to bring as many gamers onto their next-generation hardware as possible.