Episode 2 of Inside Xbox premiered yesterday evening with Microsoft taking time to debut a wealth of content coming the Xbox ecosystem.
The largest announcement of the evening was related to backwards compatibility. Not only are many more original Xbox titles soon to be playable on the Xbox One, but several Xbox 360 titles have been enhanced for the Xbox One X as well. The original Xbox titles coming to backwards compatibility, and the dates when they will be playable, are as follows:
Releasing on April 17th:
- Blinx: The Time Sweeper
- Breakdown
- Conker: Live & Reloaded
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- Hunter: The Reckoning
- Jade Empire
- Panzer Dragoon Orta
- SSX 3
Releasing on April 26th:
- Destroy All Humans!
- Full Spectrum Warrior
- Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
- MX Unleashed
- Panzer Elite Action: Fields of Glory
- Star Wars Battlefront
- Star Wars Battlefront II
- Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
- Star Wars Jedi Starfighter
- Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
- Star Wars Republic Commando
Keep in mind all of these titles run substantially better on the Xbox One family of systems with 4X the original pixel count on the Xbox One/S and 9X the pixel count on the Xbox One X along with other processing improvements.
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Portal 2
- Sonic Generations
- Gears of War 2
- Darksiders
- Star Wars The Force Unleashed
In addition to the backwards compatibility announcements, Major Nelson highlighted some of the features arriving with the Spring OS update. The highlighted features are:
- 1440p support
- New Mixer integrations and features including “share controller” and the ability to pause while switching games
- An improved Edge browser
- Spatial audio support even in the dashboard
- Open tournaments (supported through game hubs)
The team also spoke about a few specific titles including:
- Robocraft Infinity
- Launching with Xbox Game Pass on April 11th
- Overkill’s The Walking Dead
- A new trailer is available on the Xbox YouTube page here.
- PUBG
- Update on improvements, schedule for Miramar release, and a new cosmetic pack
Lastly, the team provided some updates on the plans for E3 and Xbox Fanfest which were welcome. 1,000 fans will be welcome to the Xbox E3 briefing in 2018 and another 400 will be invited to the Xbox Fanfest event. You can follow the updates on Twitter via the #XboxFanFest hashtag!
Our Take
The backwards compatibility team at Xbox is honestly out doing themselves. The ability to play 19 more original Xbox titles, with very substantial improvements, on the Xbox One is excellent especially when you consider some of the titles are console exclusives like Morrowind, Jade Empire, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and more. Additionally, playing titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, Sonic Generations, and the other Xbox 360 titles in 4K on the Xbox One X is simply fantastic.
The Spring update for the Xbox One OS is also very welcome though we were hoping to see an update on the new avatars which are taking an extremely long time to debut for reasons unknown. Lastly, the news on Xbox Fanfest and the plans for E3 were welcome and it’s nice to see the Xbox team working to allow more fans to be involved in the festivities.