Over the weekend another wave of Xbox 360 titles were available on the Xbox One. This fits with the recent announcement that these titles would come out as they were ready and no longer had wait for a monthly release. So when games like Red Dead Redemption, Left 4 Dead 2, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were popping up as downloadable on Xbox Ones everyone got very excited. Then people started to have trouble.
For some they couldn’t download these games. Others would download one game only to have another backwards compatible title play in its place. And worst of all no one knew why this was all happening. Turns out it was a pretty simple explanation, you weren’t meant to see or download any of these games in the first place.
In a post on Reddit, and in subsequent tweets, Xbox’s Major Nelson explained exactly what happened. In the process of testing how games run on the Xbox One’s Xbox 360 emulator they need to test them in the back end, and during those tests certain titles became available to the public. Everything has been removed and Major Nelson says Xbox “will have more information on upcoming releases soon”.
According to their previous statements the backwards compatibility program is opt-in. Meaning developers, publishers, or whoever else has a game on the Xbox 360 merely needs to contact Xbox and let them know they want to be on modern consoles. The question remains if Rockstar wants Red Dead to be backwards compatible or if Xbox is merely doing the legwork ahead of time. My guess is the former. No reason to do work if the publisher might still say no, so dust off your old discs, and get ready to saddle up.
Also makes you wonder if a sequel might be in the works.
