During its E3 2015 noise-gasm in Los Angeles today, Microsoft announced that the Xbox One will soon acquire limited backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games. Any digital 360 games you’ve purchased will simply show up in the “ready to install” section of your Xbox One, as long as they’re on the list of supported games—a list that’s short for now:
A Kingdom For Keflings
A World Of Keflings
Alien Hominid
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
BattleBlock Theater
Defense Grid
Geometry Wars Evolved
Hexic HD
Jetpac Refuelled
Kameo
Mass Effect
Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark Zero
Small Arms
Super Meat Boy
Toy Soldiers
Toy Soldiers: Cold War
Viva Piñata
Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise
Microsoft promised that the backward-compatibility roster would expand to include more than 100 games by the end of the year. Disc games will also be covered (again, only if they’re on the list): You put your disc in the Xbox One, download it to the hard drive, and you’re good to go.
After explaining the feature, Xbox executive Phil Spencer remarked, “We won’t charge you to play the games you already own,” a burn directed at Sony’s PlayStation Now feature, which pretty much does that. And now Sony is presumably crying because Microsoft was mean. Is this how you “win E3,” Microsoft? By making the other corporations sad? It hardly seems worth it if that’s the way you’re going to behave. After all, Sony would never say nasty things about you.*
* May not be true