Xbox One Will Have An Official Xbox 360 Emulator When Microsoft Finishes ‘Thinking It Through’

An obvious way to make the Xbox One more appealing would be for it to run older Xbox 360 titles too. Microsoft has confirmed that it is still working on plans to make that happen.

During a session by partner development lead Frank Savage on the Xbox One’s use of Windows technology at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, the issue came up during audience questions. Here’s the exchange in full:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are there plans for an Xbox 360 emulator on Xbox One? SAVAGE: There are, but we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself.

Of course, being able to run 360 games on the Xbox One doesn’t mean Microsoft would allow you to simply pop your existing discs in — it might well choose to copy Sony and resell you those titles as downloads. Still, it’s something to look forward to — and there are unofficial efforts going on too.

Disclosure: Angus Kidman travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Microsoft.