How Backwards Compatible Games Play Better On Xbox Series X

Microsoft has put out a new article on Xbox Wire detailing the Xbox Series X's backwards compatibility features, revealing that thousands of games are already playable on the system.

As part of this, Director of Program Management for Xbox Series X Jason Ronald also talked about some of the ways Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games "play better" on the console.

Firstly, he confirmed these titles "run at the peak performance that they were originally designed for, many times even higher performance than the games saw on their original launch platform."

"Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game. "

In addition to the possibility of higher and more steady frame rates, these games also benefit from "significant reductions" in load times, as well as support for the Xbox Series X's new Quick Resume feature, which will allow you to resume exactly where you left off across multiple titles simultaneously.

Furthermore, the Xbox Series X also delivers a new HDR reconstruction technique which allows the system to provide automatic HDR support to backwards compatible games.

"As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game’s performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR."

Finally, the compatibility team has also developed new techniques that could allow certain titles to run at higher resolutions and image quality than what was possible when they were first created, while a select group of games could see their frame rates boosted from 30fps to 60fps, or even 60fps to 120fps!

Which of these new improvements are you most excited for on Xbox Series X? Let us know in the comments.