Project Scorpio Will Let You Play Your Xbox 360 Games

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Backwards compatibility with an ever-growing list of Xbox 360 titles is one of the coolest features of the Xbox One, so it’s great to hear that we’ll also be able to play them on Microsoft’s next console. While many assumed that the yet-to-be-named Project Scorpio would support Xbox 360 games, it had not been officially confirmed until today by Xbox’s director of product management, Mike Ybarra.

Project Scorpio was announced at E3 back in June with the promise of bringing native 4K gaming to a console for the very first time, although a number of games have since been confirmed to run at that resolution on Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro ahead of its release next week. Among those set to run at 4K on the Pro at launch are Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Remastered and Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Still, with full compatibility with all existing Xbox One games and now plenty of Xbox 360 ones too, Project Scorpio will certainly have a vast and impressive library when it launches in time for Christmas 2017. Some of last generation’s most critically acclaimed games are playable via Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, including Rockstar’s epic Red Dead Redemption, Treyarch’s first Call of Duty: Black Ops, the original Gears of War trilogy, and Bungie’s parting gift to Microsoft, Halo: Reach.

Microsoft has generated a lot of goodwill by introducing backwards compatibility to the Xbox One, with it being a feature many feared had been consigned to history. Sony has failed to provide backwards compatibility on any of its consoles since the first incarnation of the PlayStation 3 back in 2006 and the Nintendo Switch will not be able to play any Wii U or 3DS games. So far Microsoft has not found a way to allow for original Xbox games to run on its current console, but you certainly wouldn’t put it past them.