The lack of backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One has no doubt angered and frustrated gamers. But there may be hope on the horizon.
In an interview with Engadget, Xbox head Phil Spencer said that while there is no plan to let people play 360 games on the Xbox One, Microsoft is “brainstorming” the possibility.
The main issue is that the Xbox One runs on an eight-core x6 processor vs. the three Power PC cores in the Xbox 360 — the two architectures aren’t compatible.
When asked by Engadget’s Ben Gilbert about the possibility of an Xbox 360 emulator, Spencer made clear that there is no set plan for something like that. Still, though, the Xbox folks at Microsoft are thinking about it.
“The Xbox 360 has an amazing content catalog, one of the largest catalogs ever created,” Spencer said. “When I think about that content, I don’t want that content to just waste away. I want it to be content that people can play for many years. There are a lot of ways for us to enable that.”
Technically, if you really want to, there is a way to play your Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. By connecting one end of an HDMI cord to your Xbox 360 and the other end to the Xbox One’s HDMI input port — typically meant to feed a cable or satellite connection — you can play 360 games from the Xbox One.
Spencer also touched on Microsoft’s plans for virtual reality, noting that “we have our skunkworks stuff that we’re working through, but right now we’re watching how the VR space evolves to see if it ends up as a mainstream consumer scenario.”
