Today, Jason Ronald, Director of Program Management for Xbox Series X dropped an informative Xbox Wire post detailing how the team at Microsoft are pushing the envelope when it comes to Backwards Compatibility on consoles.
Thousands of games from previous generations of Xbox consoles will feature automated HDR and Quick Resume support and for some select titles, the ability to double the frame rates and more.
The BC team at Xbox have already completed over 100,000 hours of play testing and confirmed thousands of titles are already playable on Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to the cult classics. Indeed, by the time Series X launches later this year, the team would have logged over 200,000 hours of testing in all.
One key paragraph stood out to us from the Xbox Wire Article.
All Games Play Better on Xbox Series X
Not only should gamers be able to play all of these games from the past, but they should play better than ever before. 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. This means that all 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, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality. Backwards compatible titles also see significant reductions in in-game load times from the massive leap in performance from our custom NVME SSD which powers the Xbox Velocity Architecture.
Jason Ronald, Xbox Wire.
What’s interesting here is the continued mention of how the games are consistently using the full power of the Series X, with the phrase ‘No boost mode, no downclocking’ being used here. Indeed, Xbox Social media are also repeating it. I wonder what they could be referring to?
There was also a quick but indirect mention of the upcoming July Showcase for Xbox:
Thousands of developers from across the globe are currently creating the next generation of transformative games, many of which can only be realized through the power and innovation of the Xbox Series X. Led by Halo Infinite, our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams are hard at work creating the biggest and best line up of exclusives in Xbox history. We are incredibly excited to show many of the new games in development for Xbox Series X soon.
Jason Ronald, Xbox Wire
Roll on July!
