Microsoft, they of the recent mass layoffs and reported Israeli military links, are reportedly set to offer devs a chance to bring their Xbox 360 games to PC as part of an ongoing backwards compatibility push.
That’s according to a leaked document seen by The Verge, who report that the doc was sent from Microsoft to studios. The doc suggests developers will be able to opt into porting their previously released 360 games to PC – more than likely via the official 360 emulator Xbox recently shipped as part of their efforts to port original Xbox games – with Microsoft letting them decide the price of said games and whether they hit Xbox Game Pass. This 360 backwards compatibility is currently expected to undergo a “gradual” rollout between 2027 and 2028.
The console makers’ goal with all of this, aside from perhaps a bit of reputation repairing, is reportedly to build up a big library of old Xbox games which can be played across “Xbox PCs”, handhelds, and Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. The latter’s been painted to be more PC-like than its predecessors thus far, so a desire to beef up its catalogue resulting in more old Xbox games hitting PC isn’t too surprising. Even if it arguably feels out of step with current Xbox leadership’s push to distance themselves from what their predecessors did in terms of adopting a multiplatform stategy which emphasised Game Pass and Xbox games being playable on non-Xbox hardware.
The document also reportedly mentions details about a disc-to-digital program that’ll offer owners of Xbox One and Xbox Series X games on disc a license for the digital version of the game, which they’ll then be able to use across various Xbox devices. While that seems mostly relvant to console players as of right now, it is noteworthy in the wider context of game preservation, as the console makers start to mirror the PC space’s move towards general disclessness.
