Microsoft confirmed the names of a few more Xbox 360 games that will soon be functional on Xbox One through the newer console’s backwards compatibility feature, but they also showed a reel that hinted at lots more. Let’s enhance and see what we can see.


The first one is unknowable.

After that, we’ve got:

Trials

Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Far Cry 3

Fallout 3

Fable 2

BioShock Infinite

Dynasty Warriors

Driver San Francisco

Disney Universe

Defense Grid

Dead Space

Dark Souls

Civilization Revolution

Child of Eden

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Cars

Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway

Borderlands

BioShock

Bayonetta

Battleblock Theater

Banjo Tooie

Tom Clancy’s Endwar

Assassin’s Creed II

Risen 2

Far Cry 2

Alien Hominid

Alan Wake

A World of Keflings

A Kingdom of Keflings

Risen

Unclear — another Dead Space?

Unclear

Another Assassin’s Creed

Beyond that, it’s pretty tough to see what’s what, though I toss it to you the hive mind to see if you can sort out what’s in the back part of the reel. I see Assassin’s Creed Revelations and a Viva Piñata, but beyond that I’m not sure what we’ve got here.


That final “EX” one is Shadow Complex.

Users of the Xbox One preview program can already play a number of Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. I’ve used it myself. Today’s new Xbox One release, Rare Replay, is the first non-preview use of the feature, giving users access to nine 360 titles on the Xbox One:


Beyond that, Bethesda has said that Fallout 3 will be supported, and Ubisoft and Square Enix showed in trailers today that Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 as well as Just Cause 2 will all work with the feature, too. All of those publishers seem to be bundling those Xbox 360 games with their forthcoming respective Xbox One sequels.

There don’t appear to be any technical hurdles to getting more games on the list, as long as those games don’t require Kinect, which isn’t part of this. The backwards compatibility feature in Xbox One basically is “just” the console pretending to be a 360, so as best we understand it—and as Microsoft has explained it—any 360 game can run on the Xbox One. It’s simply a matter of publishers giving Microsoft the ok. We recently asked publishers if they were giving Microsoft the okay, and pretty much all of them gave us a no-comment. Today, Microsoft mentioned the following publishers as among the first supporting the program:


The most conspicuous absence there is Activision, which is too bad given that the most-requested game for the entire program is an Activision game:


There’s no indication of any of those three games being greenlit for backwards compatibility yet.

Microsoft did recently say that all four Xbox 360 Gears of War games will not only be supported but will be offered to all purchasers of this month’s remake of the first game. At Gamescom, the company also said that it would support back compatibility for the key games it published on 360 in some shape or form (remember, Microsoft published the first Mass Effect, and therefore isn’t likely to be talking about the subsequent games in this first-party context):


We’ve asked Microsoft if they can send us a full list of games that will be supported.

Xbox One backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games will go live in November. Microsoft is promising support at launch for over 100 games and says the feature will be free to all users. Presumably it’ll help if you own the games on disc or digitally, though it’s not clear how this will work if you merely borrow a disc. The Xbox One downloads a copy of the game to your harddrive, but surely they’ll check if you still have the copy by requiring you to keep the disc in? What we do know is that, yes, it works with your old save files. It’s worked with all the games I’ve used it for so far.


UPDATE - 2:25pm: While I’d only tested the Xbox One’s backwards compatibility feature with games I owned digitally, multiple readers who also have tried it through the Xbox One’s preview program say that you do indeed have to keep your Xbox 360 disc in the whole time you’re using the game on the Xbox One, even though the console is running a downloaded copy of the game. That’s clearly Microsoft’s way to make sure that people aren’t tricking the system. Seems fair. And if you own the game digitally, no disc needed, as I’ve experienced.

UPDATE - 6:20pm: Microsoft has declined to say whether the games in the reel shown at Gamescom today are all confirmed for backwards compatibility’s official November launch. “The image we shared in the briefing is representative of the rich and diverse selection of titles we could bring to the program in the future,” a Microsoft rep told me over e-mail, pointing me to the shorter list of games that the Xbox One preview version of backwards compatibility now supports. “We aren’t confirming anything beyond this list but look forward to sharing more as we get closer to launch.” You, dear reader, will have to decide whether or not Microsoft chose games for that reel that they don’t think they can actually deliver, which would be interesting considering that the reel stuck only to games from the publishers Microsoft then said were on board with the program.

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