Xbox One will be able to Play Xbox 360 Games; Both Digital & Retail Copies will work

Microsoft just announced at E3 that Xbox One will be able to play most of the Xbox 360 games, making it the only nextgen console to have backward compatibility. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer announced this news during the Xbox Keynote today.

Xbox E3

Microsoft is working on patches that will make this possible, and starting this holiday season, it will work with over 100 titles, and more to follow later.  Backward compatibility is a huge task, and every game needs individual patching. Best part, this will work with both Digital downloads, and retail discs.  For retail discs, you will have to download the game on your console and then play it. the disc will only be used to verify for ownership.

Today, there’s already an initial set of backwards compatible titles available for Xbox preview program members.

How does it work?

In the background, Microsoft uses an Xbox 360 emulator which runs on Xbox One. Very much like the XP mode used to run on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.  This emulator makes it possible for anyone to run the Xbox 360 games on the console.

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