It's 2015, Microsoft has had a rough start to its most recent Xbox console generation, and it's banking on a megaton announcement to get longtime fans back onside. Fast-forward to the team's E3 Showcase in June - and it more than delivers. Xbox 360 backwards compatibility is announced for Xbox One, and the crowd goes absolutely wild with excitement. Finally, Xbox fans can play their vast 360 libraries on Microsoft's new 'all-in-one' entertainment machine.

Who here remembers that moment? We do, and looking ahead to 2025, we want to take a minute to think back to that nearly 10-year-old announcement. Seriously, it's been a whole decade of enjoying amazing Xbox 360 games on modern console hardware - which of course went on to include Xbox Series X and S when those consoles launched in November 2020.

In the end, more than 500 Xbox 360 games were brought to the program, alongside a much smaller selection of OG Xbox titles; which were still welcomed with open arms. Of course, there remains some huge omissions that never came to the library — especially games that had licensing issues — but looking back, it still feels like a miracle that Microsoft got this many Xbox classics into the BC program.

Another feature that we really want to shout out here is FPS Boost. We know this wasn't strictly a backwards compatibility announcement, but the current-gen exclusive feature has gone on to vastly improve so many 360 games on Xbox Series X|S. The fact that we can all enjoy the likes of the entire Gears of War trilogy, Alan Wake, Fallout 3 & New Vegas, Far Cry 3 and many others at 60FPS is absolutely fantastic - and makes Xbox's decision to launch backwards compatibility look even better these days.

Anyway, in just over a week or so, we'll be into the 10th year of modern Xbox back compat being a major console feature for Microsoft, and we're still hugely grateful for it in 2024. These days, it goes without saying that new console hardware will work with older games - but that was a much more uncertain prospect back in 2015, and our Xbox experience has been massively improved over the years thanks to its existence.

Do you remember this massive E3 announcement? Still make use of Xbox's BC program today? Talk to us about it all down in the comments.