If you own a lot of Xbox 360 games, you’re probably still on the fence about the Xbox One. Microsoft wants to get you buying, though, so they’ve just announced that the Xbox One is becoming fully backwards-compatible with all Xbox 360 games.
There are a few catches; the service is available today for Preview members, but everyone else gets it this holiday. Also, the games will start appear automatically as they’re uploaded to Xbox Live. If you’ve got a game on disc, simply place it in the tray, and the game will download for you to play. This being the gaming industry, the announcement ended with a little dig at Sony, stating that you don’t have to pay again to play the games you already own.
Oh, and multiplayer does, in fact, cross over. So, if your friends are still on the 360, you’ll be able to play with them again. It’s a neat, and highly demanded, feature, but we’ll want to see how many games are compatible at launch, and how quickly games are added. It’s worth noting this feature was all over their E3 presentation, with plenty of free games tied to new releases. That’s going to be what makes this feature great or terrible, especially because Microsoft is doing all the porting. We’ll find out later this year.
(via Major Nelson)