Well, the new generation of gaming got off to a rocky start for a number of reasons: First, the Xbox One was coming in off a very tumultuous summer of DRM. Next, the sales for the XB1 sparked and peaked early, and are now slowly climbing on the monthly charts. Thirdly, the PS4 and Xbox One both launched with less-than-stellar titles that saw them get butt-whipped by the Wii U in the Metacritic department. But the most egregious of crimes that the eighth-gen twins committed coming out of the box, was the lack of backwards compatibility.
Sony has already started traveling down the road of redemption with their upcoming PlayStation Now service – a service that's currently being beta tested and something we're likely to see at this year's E3. However, where does the Micro 'S' fit into all of this? The Wii U launched with backwards compatibility and the PS4 is getting it soon. Microsoft had previously mentioned that there would be no backwards compatibility for digital games, but the tune may be changing fast as the competitive landscape continues to evolve and fold in a favor not their own.
Well, coming out of the Build 2014 conference regarding the session that involved “Understanding the Xbox One Game Platform Built on Windows”, the first thing the audience asked in the post-session Q&A was about backwards compatibility.
Powerleveled.com managed to get a hold of the question and answer for something that could help extend and expand the life of the Xbox One in this early growing pains of the eighth gen.
In regards to backwards compatibility, here's the question and below is the answer from Microsoft's Frank Savage:
“ Q. Are there any plans for an emulator for the 360 games?A. There are. But we aren’t done thinking them through yet unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the x86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I’d love to see it myself too.”
So they have plans, but they haven't been able to get anything going? Maybe they should consider hitting up the services of the Xenia developers to get some help in making progress on an Xbox 360 emulator.
Still, many gamers are questioning how this will work given that the Xbox One certainly isn't powerful enough to brute force emulation of the Xbox 360 on its own hardware and designing software threads to workaround hardware limitations could take a decade (or longer).
The common solution is the cloud. Doing what Sony is doing seems to make the most sense, and would actually fit in with the whole point of the Azure infrastructure. However, we won't know until we know, and for that to happen it seems as if Microsoft needs to hammer out an ironclad plan to make that happen.
Seriously, though, the Xbox One might actually be worth its price if they can get a legitimate form of backwards compatibility working sooner rather than later, because right now the system is just getting mopped all over the floor like a dirty rag in a prison pissing stall by the Wii U and PS4 when it comes to software library offerings.
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