All backwards compatible Xbox One titles run better on Series X

Microsoft has clarified and confirmed some Xbox Series X specifics that were previously up in the air.

In a lengthy blog post over at Xbox Wire, Microsoft has now explained more about how the backwards compatibility will work with Xbox Series X and says that it's aware of how important it is "to preserve and respect our gaming legacies". Therefore, Microsoft has managed to make it possible to run all backwards compatible Xbox One games, more than 500 Xbox 360 games and a selection of original Xbox titles even better than when they were originally released.

Microsoft claims that this is a huge accomplishment, as all games are optimized for completely different hardware. Amongst other things, we can look forward to faster loading times, higher resolutions and smoother framerates:

"Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no down clocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game. This means that all titles run at the peak performance that they were originally designed for, many times even higher performance than the games saw on their original launch platform, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality. Backwards compatible titles also see significant reductions in in-game load times from the massive leap in performance from our custom NVME SSD which powers the Xbox Velocity Architecture."

We can also look forward to getting HDR support in all games, including those that came out before HDR even existed:

"In partnership with the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, Xbox Series X delivers a new, innovative HDR reconstruction technique which enables the platform to automatically add HDR support to games. As this technique is handled by the platform itself, it allows us to enable HDR with zero impact to the game's performance and we can also apply it to Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles developed almost 20 years ago, well before the existence of HDR."

Finally, Microsoft reveals that the new Quick Resume feature on Xbox Series X also will work with older games. To make things better, all this is made possible at a platform level and therefore will "require no additional work from title developers". For a selection of games, there will also be possible to double the framerate "from 30 fps to 60 fps or 60 fps to 120 fps".

Basically, it seems like Xbox Series X is just as prepared for the past as it is for the future.