When the Xbox One was announced last year, many Xbox 360 owners were upset that the system wouldn't be backward compatible with 360 games. Now, there's some indication that Microsoft is looking to remedy this situation through emulation, though the specific timing or form that the emulation will take is still unclear.

Microsoft's still-nebulous plans for Xbox 360 emulation via the Xbox One come from a Q&A session at last week's Build developers conference, as reported by Kotaku AU. When an audience member asked if there were "plans for an Xbox 360 emulator on Xbox One," Microsoft Partner Development Lead Frank Savage responded:

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.

The change in architecture between the Xbox 360's PowerPC processor and Xbox One's x86 chip has long been suspected as the main reason that the newer system can't natively play games from its predecessor. The PS4 saw a similar architecture change from the PS3 and also lacks native backward compatibility.

Demand for backward compatibility was high enough among Xbox One early adopters that Microsoft had to warn users against a fake unlock method that was making the rounds in December. Still, it's unclear how much the feature really impacts a console's bottom line success among the general public, though some research has shown that it's an important differentiator for portable systems

In any case, Savage's vague indication that some sort of inter-console emulation "plans" exist within Microsoft doesn't necessarily mean that you'll ever be able to play an Xbox 360 disc directly through your Xbox One. It seems just as likely that Microsoft would use an emulator to let users purchase and download copies of older Xbox 360 games on their Xbox One, similar to the PS1 and PS2 classics available for download on the PlayStation Network. An emulator could also help Microsoft stream older games to the Xbox One over its Azure servers, similar to the Gaikai game streaming Sony has planned for the PS4.