At E3 2015, Phil Spencer, the chief of Xbox, took to the stage to announce that the Xbox One would be getting a brand new feature: backwards compatibility with original Xbox games through emulation. Xbox then spent the years since then adding more and more to their backwards compatibility lineup, culminating with this month's recent, and final, addition of original Xbox and 360 titles, emulated and enhanced on the Xbox Series X|S. There are currently no plans for further releases, as Xbox has been unable to acquire further rights to older games beyond what they already have.

In an interview with Axios, Phil Spencer said due to some older games being harder to track down and play, as opposed to how it is with more accessible content like music or movies, that he hopes, "as an industry we'd work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game", advocating for other companies to make use of "legal" video game emulation.

"I think in the end, if we said, ‘Hey, anybody should be able to buy any game, or own any game and continue to play,' that seems like a great North Star for us as an industry"

Source

 

[Viri]

Give me Jet Set Radio Future, Sega/Microsoft!

 

[eriol33]

it's mind boggling why retroarch hasn't worked together with steam so the developers can monetize the emulators and allow people to play the old games legally, assuming the developers still have the rights of the said games

 

[Deleted member 527055]

I bet his definition of "legal" emulation means emulating on a current generation console and re-buying your library.

Yes, it's always about making the bucks. Imagine re-selling 20-year-old game, to play on modern devices with an "OFFICIAL" Emulator.

 

[tfocosta]

This makes me laugh! Paid emulation services don't make any sense! Gaming companies should stop saying BS like this. They just want to take everything away from us and make money out of it. What a bunch of bastards!

 

[FAST6191]

This makes me laugh! Paid emulation services don't make any sense! Gaming companies should stop saying BS like this. They just want to take everything away from us and make money out of it. What a bunch of bastards!

I can see it.

If they can do a library a la some of the game libraries we are seeing that could be nice for some. Also while I generally point and laugh at the creating trophments and challenge modes out of thin air thing that Sony has done I can at least see something there, Sega has already courted hackers, and some of the people actually taking it seriously with nice histories as a wrapper, and game specific filters... that could be something interesting.

The introduction/widespread adoption of ebegging (donation drives were always a thing in this sort of world but all the click and go sites made it such that it was not nerds scratching backs of nerds) also seems to have spurred some emulator development beyond what traditional timelines and general levels of complexity would predict. Mega corp dedicating their coders to such things may well see a further spurring of such things (I have questions there vis a vis quality of coders -- emulator authors do not get churned out by the thousands like java and php coders but at the same time this is MS and they do have those that know a touch of low level efforts, not to mention we have the overhead issue where they can afford to be far less efficient... "oh no xbox is 100% like it is in any other game").

Doubtless you and I, and most others in this thread, will probably continue with ROM sets and emulators, the main difference being the debate over whether retroarch are a bunch of grifters or whether they add enough to justify themselves, but it might also be that it is not for the likes of you and I any more than many other games are not for us.

 

[SANIC]

Yes, it's always about making the bucks. Imagine re-selling 20-year-old game, to play on modern devices with an "OFFICIAL" Emulator.

The game is available to be sold again for any one who might not have their original disc copy. Otherwise just pop the 20 year old game disc in and play it on the series x

 

[rdurbin]

Isn't emulation already legal? I am gonna take a guess he meant Legally obtained ROMs

 

[sarkwalvein]

Isn't emulation already legal? I am gonna take a guess he meant Legally obtained ROMs

Yes, I think he implies the availability of a legal market where you could buy old games and run them via emulation. In the context, he is complaining, I believe, that Microsoft is having hard times to release further backwards compatible games because companies don't want to licence them further games.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Microsoft can easily make a universal emulator for the original XBOX and XBOX 360 and just let users put in their original discs.

Not having access to the licenses to the old games is a piss poor excuse in my opinion. They can't make money if they let you play original xbox/xbox 360 discs so they hide behind the licensing crap to avoid doing it. Still though they certainly tried a lot more then the other console makers so they get credit for that at least.

 

[Huneter]

we stan xbox

 

[SkyDX]

That's nice, I hope it eventually leads to being able to play XBOX and XBOX 360 games on Windows by just popping a disc in

 

[Deleted member 577889]

That's nice, I hope it eventually leads to being able to play XBOX and XBOX 360 games on Windows by just popping a disc in

most computers don't even have drives anymore, haha.

 

[SkyDX]

most computers don't even have drives anymore, haha.

Yeah but USB-drives exist and are cheap

 

[Huneter]

That's nice, I hope it eventually leads to being able to play XBOX and XBOX 360 games on Windows by just popping a disc in

yeah or like connecting your xbox live account and having all the games you played on xbox and xbox 360 just available to download or stream

 

[dh3lix-pooch]

Absolute legendary guy.