Quirks of Xbox Backwards Compatibility

it's no secret out of the big three Titans of the gaming industry Microsoft's Xbox is the king of compatibility you have a copy of the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 and won a played on the newest Xbox no problem add in an OG Xbox with another Battlefront disk connect them with system link via an ethernet cable you have eight players playing on consoles released 20 plus years apart seamlessly without using a bandsaw or any crazy hacks something absolutely unheard of on the PlayStation and Nintendo side today the Xbox brand isn't the new kid on the Block anymore Microsoft has four console generations and eight models of Xbox under their belt there were some Growing Pains but big daddy Microsoft was always there to bail them out not to say that everything is cozy and comfy on team Xbox nowadays I want to explore this philosophy of Microsoft's let's get down to the finer details of the physical media and accessories that you could run on every Xbox the Xbox is everything the rock is Cutting Edge powerful exhilarating and like The Rock it will be the most electrifying thing coming out this year there are a few stipulations I want to add consoles that claim to play older physical games are going to vary from game to game some will run almost one to one to that of their original Hardware some will run better some will have very specific hiccups ranging in severity and the rest won't run at all what I find really commendable is that Microsoft has been periodically sending updates to expand the backwards compatibility library for their consoles what I'm trying to say is I'm not going to go over every single game if it's compatible you're likely going to have to Google whether or not a game is backwards compatible with a specific console and how well it runs additionally we won't be taking jailbreaking or soft modding into account although I do hear the Xbox series X is a Powerhouse at that sort of thing no will be sticking to the rules no emulators third-party accessories and will only be lightly touching on Windows even though it's an operating system that Microsoft owns and you can play games on it will be exclusively covering the Xbox brand if you do need an answer to something quick there's a link in the description to a Google Sheets page with a chart detailing which media and accessories are compatible with which console I'm liable to get something wrong in this video so I'll be keeping this sheet up to date with hopefully the most accurate info foreign the original Xbox released in November of 2001 in North America and the following year in Japan and pal regions this is obviously the first Xbox console and there are no previous consoles to be backwards compatible with so we'll be focusing on a lot of historical information things that might change or be maintained in the future also we'll be touching on region locking and if there are any iterations of the console within the same generation that might have changes failure people is not an option there were a handful of iterations of the original console one of the most notable differences between iterations being an increase in the hard drive size from 8 gigabyte to 10 gigabyte this hard drive was one of the big standout features from the competition not only could you use it for save game data but you could also rip audio files from a CD put it on your Xbox hard drive and listen to those while you play a game DVDs were a little bit more involved while the Xbox could play DVDs it required the Xbox DVD playback kit basically just an official IR receiver and remote from Microsoft there were two generations of Xbox controllers the first generation nicknamed The Fatty and later the Duke was the original controller bundled with all Xbox systems for all territories except for Japan holding true to its name this controller was a big boy too big for some people as this controller got a lot of criticism in force Microsoft's hand to make a new iteration called the Xbox controller s while I don't mind the controller s's design I think it loses a little bit of Personality where the Duke had that big gut hanging out at the bottom the controller s just doesn't have the same uniqueness that original one had nor could you sit a Mountain Dew can in the middle of it as easy that being said something unique these controllers introduced was the Breakaway cable this was essentially just a tiny little cable that would connect your long controller cable to the console itself this was designed to essentially prevent the console from being pulled by the controller if somebody tripped on the cable or if you pulled the controller too hard personally I just always saw it as like another piece to lose something else I had to keep track of but what's great is that the Breakaway cables for the Duke controller and the S controller are basically the same part and compatible with one another's controller likely taking inspiration from the Dreamcast both Xbox controllers had expansion ports in the back these were used for memory units that you could transfer game saves on microphone headset adapters keyboard adapters and more like the official PS2 memory card the official Xbox memory unit could only hold 8 megabytes being that you had this big old hard drive in your Xbox these were kind of sparsely used unless you want to take your game save to your friends house am I right Marines sir yes sir damn right I am let's talk region locking yes most original Xbox games are region locked although there are exceptions and it varies on a game by game basis I'm not gonna list every single game but to give you a few examples Halo 2 Rainbow Six Three Star Wars Battlefront Star Wars Battlefront 2 Fable all of these games are region free meaning you can play them on any Xbox any localization of the game one last topic I want to cover before getting to the 360 is system link system link allowed two or more separate Xbox consoles to talk to one another without an internet connection all that's needed is the multiple console setups each with its own display multiple copies of the game you plan on playing and if you're only connecting two consoles a single ethernet cable to connect the two if you're connecting more you'll need a network Hub switch or router to gain access to the additional ports as well as the appropriate amount of ethernet cables Xboxes only have one network Port so unfortunately you can't daisy chain a third box without one of these networking devices system link birthed console Lan parties has several games that supported this feature also allowed for split screenplay the amount of consoles and total players allowed was completely dependent on the game for instance Halo Combat Evolved allowed for a maximum of four consoles and 16 players that being four controllers per console Xbox Live would release in 2002 and proved to be the more popular option as more households moved to broadband internet system link Xbox Live and titles that supported the two gave Microsoft a foothold in the console space market share that would only increase with the Next Generation thank you the Xbox 360 the days of Halo 3 cod zombies and red rings I remember a buddy of mine getting one near launch and I was absolutely mind blown how good Elder Scrolls Oblivion looked let me see your face you are the one from my dreams so a question many Xbox fans had upon the release of the 360 was could you play your original Xbox games on the 360. answer being yes for a good amount of games it is possible there are a total of 998 original Xbox games as of today 461 of them are playable on the Xbox 360. this only goes for the North American Xbox 360 and Xbox games like the original Xbox the Xbox 360 is region locked partially it varies per game so unfortunately that means that that 461 number of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360s that's probably going to be less in other regions and that 461 is not going up as Microsoft ended supporting the Xbox 360 in 2016 so no matter how much time passes you you will never be able to play your original Xbox release of Metal Gear Solid 2 on your 360. appearance for souvenir an additional caveat to utilize the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility is you must have a hard drive to go along with it I bring this up mainly because there were two iterations of the Xbox 360 that released without hard drives included that being the Xbox 360 core and the Xbox 360 arcade the main difference between these two is the core use composite cables while the arcade used an HDMI cable what was great about these is if you got stuck with one and you wanted a hard drive you could buy the official Xbox 360 hard drive separately and be good to go unfortunately there's no official way to transfer your original Xbox saves to your 360. now there are some unofficial like follow-up 40 minute YouTube tutorial ways to do it the Xbox 360 actually came with its own proprietary memory unit design it used them all the way up to the Xbox 360 Elite and dropped them at the Xbox 360 s or Xbox 360 slim the elite beefed up the standard hard drive size to 120 gigabytes and despite being released in 2007 in North American and pal regions it still lacked onboard Wi-Fi and required an external adapter that would change with the Xbox 360 slim and Xbox 360 E these iterations put everything in a smaller form factor they added a larger hard drive and even slightly updated the controller the slim released alongside one of the Xbox's more high-profile peripherals being the Xbox Kinect this was very different from the Xbox 360 Live vision camera that was released prior to this the vision cam was basically just like a webcam you could use with some Xbox 360 games like Uno it's actually also compatible with Windows too it's just like a normal webcam as you may know the Xbox Connect was a direct response to the Nintendo's Wii motion control and allowed the user to use their body as a controller some games were developed with optional connect functionality While others were designed specifically to only work with the connect a little fun fact if you buy the right adapter and download The Right SDK you can use your Xbox 360 Connect as a webcam on your PC something more commonly known if you have a wired Xbox 360 controller you can plug it into a Windows machine and it will work natively as this time around I went with a USB connection they did keep the Breakaway cable though for those of you who like to tug there was also an official adapter that made the wireless controllers work for Windows I bring this up because going forward you're going to notice more of this pattern of the Xbox peripherals working on Windows and even vice versa and it's really interesting because the Mantra of the first Xbox was to separate the two Brands Microsoft has been going back on this the past several years and as someone who owns a Windows PC and not the latest Xbox I love it it's fantastic that I can get the latest Xbox controller use it on my PC without any third-party software just plug and play if you missed out playing DVDs on your original Xbox Rejoice because the Xbox 360 can natively play DVDs if you want to play a Blu-Ray though you'll have to go to PS3 because none of the Xbox 360s can play Blu-rays although if you're one of the five people who bought HD DVDs there is an adapter you can buy if you don't know what an HD DVD is don't worry about it this was a strange time before streaming and we wanted to upgrade the optical media Sony made Blu-ray which you know packaged along with the PS3 Toshiba made HD DVDs one of them you can no longer buy in stores today lastly let's talk about system link the 360 has its own system link supported games like Halo 3. this time around you can system link wirelessly if you have an older Xbox 360 model that's Elite or before you will need the wireless adapter if you have a Slimmer newer with the onboard Wi-Fi you should be set note that you cannot mix and match with wireless and wired system link connections additionally if your Xbox 360 is compatible with an old Xbox game you want a system link with the 360 can be subbed in for an original Xbox just fine so if you want to start up a Star Wars Battlefront 2 LAN party with your friends and all you got is an Xbox 360 and they got original Xboxes bring it over and you'll be just fine quite incredibly this stays true for every future Xbox console all the way to today with the Xbox series X if you have not seen this in action I recommend you go watch a video by modernvintagegamer Xbox system link works across four console Generations he hooks up an original Xbox and Xbox 360 and Xbox One and an Xbox series s and it is very cool to see it all in action the Xbox One the Xbox that was concerned with being the all-in-one entertainment center hence the name what's really ironic about that is a lot of people at Microsoft wanted the original Xbox to be that in the living room they wanted Microsoft Office to be in the living room before the competition got to that area of the home thankfully there was a group of Microsoft employees that thought the Xbox should focus on games so it's really ironic that the Third Xbox generation we go back to this idea and Microsoft so heavily advertised streaming services video chat things that people weren't primarily buying an Xbox for I will give the Xbox one one thing you can play audio CDs on it which you cannot on the PS4 but you do have to download like the stupid Microsoft groove app on it first before you came this obviously does not apply to the Xbox One S All Digital Edition which did not contain a Blu-ray Drive which means we've reached the part in the timeline where digital editions of games have become as popular as their physical editions so the big question is can you play your original Xbox discs your original Xbox 360 discs and your Xbox 360 downloaded games on the Xbox One consoles answer being yes you can and just like Xbox to Xbox 360 you cannot play all of them unlike Xbox Xbox 360 Microsoft is still to this day actively supporting the addition of new titles being compatible does that mean every single original Xbox game disc is going to work on your Xbox One unfortunately no for example your Halo 2 Disc will not work on your Xbox one like it would on your 360. although the reason behind that one specifically is they probably just want you to go buy the Master Chief Collection which is just a remake of all those games so go figure of the 1126 Xbox 360 games 632 of them are compatible with the 1 series or should I say one models I hate that the next console has the word Series in it those numbers are relative to supporting the disk release and or the Xbox Live arcade digital release so again it's kind of a mixed bag and you're best off just Googling it if you have a question about a specific game let's talk about the different models because your experience with new and old games will differ based on which model you have go to Internet Explorer oh nice so there are four Xbox One models backwards compatibility is going to remain the same across all four as far as like what you can play first there's the original Xbox One it looked like a VCR came out holiday season 2013. in 2016 we got the Xbox One S this was a slim version with slightly bump specs and the ability to Output 4K the next year in 2017 we got the Xbox One X this came with yet another spec bump and the ability to play enhanced Xbox and Xbox 360 games these enhancements include increased resolution HDR Dolby Atmos and FPS boosts these only apply for a fraction of the previous libraries for example Assassin's Creed 1 gets the resolution boost the FPS boost while Call of Duty Black Ops has no enhancements the last Xbox One released had the longest name it was the Xbox One S All Digital Edition released in May 2019 this was pretty much just a disc list Xbox One S apart from not having the disk drive it also lacked the spec bump that the E1 X had still a nice little cozy console definitely not a trojan horse for Game Pass Microsoft also released the Xbox play Anywhere program if you buy a game within this program digitally you can play it on your Xbox One console and your Windows PC as progress will sync between the two for example Gears of War 4 did this this does not mean you can buy a physical copy of Gears of War 4 and put it in your PC that will not work you're essentially buying the same game on two different platforms with one purchase have you ever wanted to do more time when you're watching TV of course you have unfortunately you could not bring over your Xbox 360 controllers to play on your Xbox one but because they're PC compatible you could use them to play Xbox anywhere games on your PC but after six years of Halo 3 they're probably all grimy and leaking battery acid at least that's what mine looked like the Xbox One also introduced a new connect sensor this time around Microsoft made an adapter available for the Xbox One Kinect to work with PC so instead of just using it as like a webcam you can get all the functionality of that sensor on your PC this connect sensor actually only natively worked for the original Xbox One this adapter is also required if you want to play it on an Xbox One S or Xbox One S it is not natively compatible kind of shows how hard Microsoft was trying to drop connect after the motion control hype had died down a big net positive for Xbox this generation was the undoing of region locking a trait that is carried forward into our current disk using Xbox the series X gonna start dipping into the series X and Series S A little bit because the Xbox One consoles are 4 Word compatible some brand new Xbox series X games you can play on your 2013 Xbox One you can't play every single one but down the road you might be able to it's the same kind of deal as last time Microsoft is putting out updates to make more and more games compatible with the Xbox one line so while a game might release exclusively for the series X and Series S eventually maybe they'll make it compatible with the older consoles to my knowledge Microsoft has not put out any kind of pledge saying that oh we'll make X percentage of games forward compatible with the one line so I mean like you'd have to expect as Time Marches forward and the one consoles get older and older they'll stop doing this or maybe not maybe it's just that easy I'm no computer engineer I'm sure some games are easier to enhance slash make playable than others but I don't know only time will tell as a consumer I really appreciate the business decision you essentially have the choice to not buy the new hardware which Microsoft basically just loses money on everyone's sold anyway in the short term that is obviously in the long run you do want your customers to buy the newest Hardware but that's a whole nother thing getting back to the Xbox series X this console is backwards compatible with nearly every Xbox One game same goes for its discless counterpart the Xbox series s on the digital side they also share the same backwards compatibility features that the Xbox One X had so they're on the same ground in terms of what original Xbox games they could play and what 360 games they could play system link is also available for every single Xbox the game you're playing with system link determines the lowest common denominator of Xbox generation so while you can use like an Xbox series X to play a system link Halo 3 game you cannot use an original Xbox because an original Xbox can't run Halo 3. also connect sensors are completely incompatible with the series X and Series S if you needed more proof that they were a bad idea you actually can't even install games that require connect on those consoles as of today on the low chance they do add that but let's talk about what really matters can you play audio CDs on the Xbox series X and S yes you can at least based on the series X because that's the only one with the disk drive just something else the Xbox series X can do over the PS5 as someone who's only dabbled an Xbox it's impressive what they've done in terms of backwards compatibility like they almost want to keep the one and the series in the same generation the controllers are completely interchangeable there's no touchpad or super new functionality but if it's not broken don't fix it personally I really don't like my PS5 controllers they're uncomfortable and one of the triggers broke and is like too loose now as someone who plays a lot of PC games the PC crossover stuff is really cool the two for one deal being very enticing system link as well system link is like the coolest thing ever it sounds like a pain it sounds like oh why don't we just do that over the internet but system linking with the boys always a good time all right and that's that's about all I have to say for Xbox thank you so much for watching before I go I am going to list some of the corrections that were pointed out to me in my previous PlayStation and Nintendo backwards compatibility videos so let's do that on the PlayStation video the PS5 was not the first PlayStation console to take away the function to play audio CDs that would be the PS4 also I stated the 80 gig e01 PS3 models had their partial emulation of PS2 games removed with a firmware update by Sony that is simply not true on the Nintendo video I said the Wii Mini only released in Canada Canada was used as a test market for the Wii Mini in 2012 although it was released in Europe and North America the following year I also said the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time remake for the 3DS was a launch title it was not it came out like a month later on the N64 I said that the transfer pack only enabled you to play Pokemon red blue and yellow if you have Pokemon Stadium 2 that enables you to play red blue yellow gold silver and Crystal where gold silver Crystal are not compatible in Pokemon Stadium 1. here's one for Wii U I said the GameCube controller adapter made for that console is compatible with a few games it is actually only compatible with one game and that is Super Smash Brothers for Wii U also the Wii U pro controller is incompatible with the switch without a third-party adapter and lastly I also completely forgot to mention the switch light so I want to take this moment and say sorry to any switch light fans watching I acknowledge you I don't understand you but I respect you making these videos on top of my day job and social life has been challenging to say the least so thank you so much for watching please hit all the buttons If You're inclined stay safe out there and remember to tip your waitresses

Channel: Shanmania

Views: 219,144

Keywords: Xbox, xbox compatibility, halo, system link, xbox series x, xbox one, compatibility, can i play, microsoft

Id: zKGzIWeg5HA

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023