Backwards compatibility is the one of the features that Microsoft is implementing on their home consoles. Xbox’s Senior Director of Product Management, Albert Penello, said that they “strongly believe” in compatibility.
When Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, announced that Xbox One will be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games 2 years ago at E3, it was met with praise. The feature let newcomers to the console space, and also to the system, which makes their consumers play notable exclusives and third-party titles like Gears of War 2 and Red Dead Redemption.
Albert Penello told Gamasutra:
“It’s hard when a console transitions and you have to lose that library. Maybe you want to bring your kids through it. Maybe your buddies are getting together from college and you want to reminisce and play those old games. We respect the content.”
The direction of the Xbox team to add backwards-compatibility is not just for nostalgia, but to give their consumers to experience great classics of the previous generation.
“And I think one of the things that the PC has done well for 40 years is that there’s a thread of compatibility,” Albert told Gamasutra. “And sometimes things fall away, but for the most part you can go back and play really old PC games on a modern PC.”
Just like PC, when people upgrades their GPU, there’s lesser issues with compatibility of older games and that it can also be fixed with a driver update.
“We’re in a position at Microsoft with our backwards compatibility team and the way we architect our systems to try and bring those things into the future. So I don’t know exactly what the world’s going to bring. I think we’ll always embrace state of the art hardware tech, but I think that thread of compatibility is something that we believe really strongly in.”
Do you think it’s time for Sony to also follow this direction that the Xbox team is doing to give a little incentive for their consumers? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Gamasutra
