In addition to making these games available on PC for the first time ever, we’ve added new features to enhance the experience on PC while preserving the original gameplay. Players can customize graphics settings, including up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed display modes, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and more. These games also include customizable language and audio settings.
We plan to add even more features to XBOX Backward Compatibility games in the future. I’m excited to share that later this year we will be bringing one of the top fan-requested features to select original XBOX games on both console and PC: Achievements. The first four games releasing in preview today will be updated to include Achievements in the coming months.
Yep this clearly is part of the Helix road map, they have to get Xbox games playing on PC for it to work.
One and Series games aren’t hard as that’s basically a cut down Windows, so could run in a container or even natively, but 360 and OG games were going to be the challenge.
Good to see they’re overcoming it and Helix plans appear on track
It also opens up the Microsoft store on PC by offering old games that are likely not available anywhere else.
I don’t know if that will be enough to raise it’s profile a bit above other stores, but it also means the idea of Helix being the reference machine was on the mark.
Yeah returning to console exclusivity was likely still on the table but dropping PC, escpecially Microsofts main strengths are PC related (shooters, WRPGs, strategy) are all massive on PC platform. Additionally regardless on if game pass changing or not I would be suprised if they didn’t want to continue growing the service and PC is a market they have struggled to tap so still have a lot of potential for growth
It was easier for Sony to do that since their 1st party content didn’t have the same degree of mass appeal
It would be awesome if they can eventually extend this to the full BC library that’s already on console. I wonder if licensing issues will get in the way though. Maybe when they worked the licensing agreements for the console BC originally, the future prospect of PC was included.
It feels like such a shame this wasn’t announced during the Xbox Games Showcase. Now it comes at a solemn time when a lot of people are mixed on Xbox. Hopefully it doesn’t get buried, but honestly this is like THE vision I dreamt of for Xbox and I can’t bring myself to feel excited with all that’s going on.
If you already own a digital license for these games on console, that license now carries over to your PC or handheld. Through the power of XBOX Play Anywhere and XBOX Cloud Gaming, you can now play these classic games from the past on your XBOX console, cloud, PC and handheld.
This is just dope though. It also means that they truly can retroactively extend Xbox Play Anywhere to every Xbox game and presumably that’s the goal. If they can pull it off that’s amazing. Today anyone who already owned one of those four OG Xbox games digitally just unlocked a whole new platform of freedom. That’s amazing. Again which I could say I felt more excited, but that is objectively amazing. Maybe if they announced all the Activision games that aren’t currently backwards compatible at all as both brand new BC games and XPA games. That could break through the darkness.
Just played Crimson Skies. There is no mouse support, settings are limited. Dont expect too much but at least you can play some old games from your library on PC.
