Microsoft announced that on the occasion of Xbox’s 25th birthday, it will deliver “new ways” to play iconic games from Xbox consoles.
The next Xbox console will be a Windows PC – it’s already been confirmed. But can it be called an Xbox console if it doesn’t run games from existing Xbox consoles? It’s a big question that we don’t have an answer to, but it seems that Microsoft is working on some sort of solution.
Yesterday at the GDC convention Jason Ronald from Microsoft announced something intriguing.
“We’re committed to keeping games from four generations of Xbox playable for years to come. As part of our 25th anniversary later this year, we will introduce new ways to play some of the most legendary games from our past.”
These new ways of playing classic Xbox games sound cryptic, but unofficially behind the scenes it is stated that Microsoft is working on some kind of system to transfer the digital Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One game collection to PC / Windows. It is probably some kind of emulation, but for now there is no confirmation of that.
Although Xbox has been launching all of its games for PC for the past ten years, it hasn’t always been that way. A good number of their games from the X360 era remained Xbox exclusives, eg Forza Motorsport 1-6, Forza Horizon 1 and 3, Gears of War 2 and 3, Fable 2, etc. The Xbox One era also left a few exclusives such as Halo 5: Guardians and Rare Replay.