Last month, Microsoft revealed how it spent "well over 500,000 hours" testing gameplay across the entire Xbox backwards compatible catalogue to ensure the user experience was the best possible.
During a recent interview with Inverse, Xbox Director of Program Management Jason Ronald elaborated on this - revealing how a single game on average took anywhere between 16 - 24 hours to test, and that Microsoft had approximately 500 people playing games based on priority order.
"We've gone through test passes for about the last year, which can take 16 to 24 hours for a single game. We had an army of testers, approximately 500 of them, who went through all of them based on a priority order. If they found issues, our backwards compatibility team would fix that, with no work by developers. The onus is on us to make sure that these games continue to work."
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously noted how Microsoft aims to have all Xbox One games (excluding Kinect titles) up and running on Xbox Series X|S on day one (that's a library of around 2500 titles). In addition to this, 600 titles across the original Xbox and Xbox 360 range will be playable.
What backwards compatible titles will you be booting up on your Xbox X|S when you get your hands on the system? Tell us down in the comments.
[source inverse.com]
Comments 21
So the guy that the duty to test the Witcher 3...
Excited to try Fable 2 on my Series X when it arrives, to see if it's one of the games that hits 60 Frames.
Great news. Good to know they care so much about BC. Now, if they could add to that catalogue this gen ๐ Can't wait to play Dead Space once I get my XSX and EA joins Game Pass.
500 people to play roughly 1,000 hours of video games each? Doesn't sound like a bad gig at all.
I'm most interested in the games that have a Series X upgrade - mostly Forza Horizon 4 having beaten Gears 5 already. After that, its all the Xbox One games I have in my backlog. If I get through those, then its any 360/OG Xbox games...
Red Dead redemption with its 4k patch. Love the first game so much. Need to give the second game a chance as only a few hours in and sadly didn't have time to play with everything that's been happening in my life.
@Beermonkey It already hits native 4K on X1X and looks really good. It needs framerate upgrade.
Honestly can't wait for MS to start adding to the BC catalog again, especially for the OG XBox. Bring on Otogi, Deus Ex Invisible Wars, JSRF, and the Mech Assault games.
I only went through my list of 360 games last week and was surprised at how many of them were not BC on Xbox One/Xbox Series XS. Out of 133 physical games, 49 of them are not BC. I hope they can get back to adding more games to the list this generation.
I'm also very curious which games will have their 'locked framerate' overridden by Microsoft. I really hope Forza Horizon 3 is one of them. I know it's delisted, but so was the original Forza Horizon when it got a One X patch.
@mousieone
What's wrong with Witcher 3?
@mousieone Six months later...
@Medic_Alert Probably, which is a real shame that lots of classics wont get BC due to licensing issues.
I'm the most worried about delisted games, like all the Activision Marvel games that got delisted when they lost the license. I am not spending day one testing them, but plan to give Deadpool a spin soonish.
@Liam_Doolan Well if he doesnโt sleep, maybe only 5 months. Lol
@blinx01 nothing just the length of time needed to test to make sure everything worked in BC mode.
Hopefully start adding new BC titles again soon
I was thinking about this, and it makes a lot of sense that MS is investing so many resources on BC from the ground up. Based on the article linked, it sounds like the entire Series X and Series S were created, from the ground up, to be BC.
Why go through all of that trouble?
Because even if the consoles did not sell well, this is the same hardware that will continue to run XCloud servers going forward. They cant do what Sony does and continue manufacturing PS3s until they give up on PSNow. For this to work, they need to be able to run a single hardware stack on the servers, once the transition window is over. And for that to be possible, every single game that runs on XBox One needs to be able to run on those Series X server racks, even if only a subset will actually be offered at a time.
Can i sign up as A full time tester ๐๐
@ReddMcKnight
I just replayed the Fable series on my Xbox One and they are still a blast. I am very happy they are bringing that series back!
@Tharsman
I agree. And the Activision iD games too, like Wolfenstein & Quake 4.
@KelticDevil I loved Quake 4 when it came out.
I think with the acquisition, MS should help Bethesda get its back catalogue on xbox. iD did great with the Doom re-releases, so it would be nice to see Quake, Wolfenstein, Fallout and Elder Scrolls all get their legacy titles brought forward.
@Richnj
I completely agree. And other Activision games are backwards compatible already. So itโs not like it would be completely new thing. Hopefully, Microsoft looks into it.
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