This Week's Xbox Charts Show The Power Of Backwards Compatibility

Feels like a bad thing, Xbox 360 games are still selling because there is no new AAA games!

@Cikajovazmaj and because a lot of games declined in quality like COD

@nomither6 Yeah that's probably one of the best things about Xbox right now, the depth of it's backwards compatibility catalog and the FPS boost enhancement to many titles. With FPS enhancement you can really appreciate these old titles again, and it's amazing how many old games are better than the new offerings.

@Cikajovazmaj The shift to games-as-service and live-service gaming surely kicked single-player gaming into the ground. Sadly Xbox is also yet to give us some really good AAA SP experiences.

MW2 is so boring and awful that ppl are going back to fun Treyarch blops.

Pretty Rockstar and Activision focused list.

So we're just gonna pretend like these games weren't all just on sale for the lowest price I think I've ever seen them and that might be why people are playing them?

Also to the sad console wars people trying to say it's because no new games come to Xbox... You do realize every cross-platform game also comes to Xbox right? Like you don't actually think those only go to Playstation? Also in terms of exclusives there's really not that many a year to act like there's some huge difference in terms of having games to play...

And yet they won't bother making more games BC...

@kiwisoup Agree, At least Xbox has released a highly rated First party game this year (Hi Fi Rush) unlike Sony who have had Nothing.
Next comes Redfall a First party AAA exclusive in 4 weeks time. Then Starfield and Forza.
I see only one first party AAA exclusive from Sony this year and that doesn't even a release date.
It's looking like Sony have fallen into the same trap as MS did with Kinect and are concentrating on the VR2 and releasing old games with patches and Shovelware.

Once the activision deal goes through I hope they try to give the Activision games 4k enhancements on one x/series x.

I don't think I seen such a deep discount on so many Call of Duty games before. Hell I was tempted to get some of the classics but still don't want to give Kotick money, and by the time I get to them in my backlog they would had all likely been added to Game Pass, since the acquisition would have been history by then.

Some of the 360 call of duty games have been in the top 50 basically all the time, I think specifically the Black Ops ones.

A lot of people love to pretend only new games mater, but good games sell, regardless if they are new or old, and backwards compatibility is extremely lucrative to publishers because of it.

Literally all I use my one x for. Only new game I’ve bought is infinite. But tbf there’s been very few new games that have interested me for Xbox. I probably would have bought resi 4 remake if it was available but it isn’t so.

@shoeses Here's hoping MS will backpedal on that, especially considering the limited number of OG Xbox games that made it over.

Backwards compatibility is a lot of what I buy/play now, and is one of the main reasons that the Series X looks so appealing. (Almost everything from the past 10 years is better on PC anyway, so the chance to play true console exclusives from back in the day, often at 60fps, is a real draw!)

And hey, while we're dreaming, might as well put in a request for more FPS boost titles via simple RAM patches- this would open up a whole bunch more games which didn't work with the current method.

Seems like a nice hand off from the recent and current sales of 360 titles. I don't really play many old 360 games but even I was tempted with some of the sale prices

And now that people are pretty confident the merger is going to happen I'm sure many might want to catch up on the old games before the newest comes to GP.

COD sucks but BWC is awesome, so it's a conflicting story. 😅

@kiwisoup These old games have bottomed out on price a long time ago, and go on sale every 2-3 months. The fact that they're still topping charts despite how many people already own them at this point IS telling of how people view AAA games in current year. Even if we ignore this as evidence, Indies have been more popular the past few years than most AAA games.

@smoreon What makes it so much worse is not only are new games not being added, but more are being delisted every month. I don't buy for a second that they 'ran out of feasible titles' when they have things like the middle game in the DeathSpank trilogy but not the other two, or the second Sonic & Sega Racing but not the first as examples. Very much seems like Microsoft just didn't want to continue rather than no one else would cooperate.

@Sifi @kiwisoup Nothing for PS5 except remasters and cross-gen exclusives that somehow seem PS4 games sequels/DLC. PSVR2 is not as successful as PSVR either. Once the acquisition is complete and the Xbox Game Studios start releasing new games, Xbox will have more exclusives than PS. It's ironic when PS is all about generations and first-party exclusives.

@smoreon I'd love more games being added to the backwards compatible catalogue, any that doesn't have licence issues. It's the best thing about Xbox in my opinion.

@shoeses Yeah, there's definitely more than licensing going on there, as I heard from someone who was trying to get their games included in the BC program. MS seemingly wasn't interested in bringing just any/every title over. Again, hoping they change their minds!

I didn't realize so many games were being delisted. That's a shame.

You mentioned Sonic and Sega- it, specifically, could have some issues around music: namely, the licensed tracks in the Samba de Amigo stages, as well as whatever caused Sega to replace all of the music in HotD Remake.

@shoeses so it's just a huge coincidence that all the old games on the list are on sale because everyone already had them... Lol ok bud

@kiwisoup I didn't say it was, but I guess that'd require the attention span to read past the first sentence before saying something stupid.

This is the main reason why I came back to Xbox after the last generation. Just working on Dark Souls achievements that I left undone back in 2012 or something and loving it. The game is running really smoothly compared to the 360 too.

Next up, Syndicate (as the servers are closing).

Really hope MS notices and decides to revive the backwards compatible program to bring more over.

@smoreon Good point, perhaps Sega didn't get the rights to one of the songs renewed. It's a pity because I like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. I have the Wii version that is really blurry and I have the digital Xbox 360 version with Banjo-Kazooie 😍 but I can't play it because I don't have an Xbox 360. I tried to run the game on Xenia emulator on Series X after being amazed by Rare's Goldeneye 007 remaster but the frame rate tanks. It makes you appreciate Microsoft's engineers even more. Backwards compatibility is an amazing feature, even more because it's free and enhanced.

@smoreon If it was the licensed tracks I feel it would've been removed digitally all together, no?

@Banjo- The native PC port looks great, though it doesn't have Banjo and Kazooie. You could also try running the Wii version in Dolphin. Its graphics aren't as good as the PC/360 versions, but it still looks nice in 1080p or 4K with the 60fps code. (This does require a fairly beefy CPU, but I think the Series X or equivalent is up to the task.)

And yes, Microsoft's engineers getting Xbox 360 (or even original Xbox) games to run at full speed or better on the Xbox One is some incredible technical wizardry, and not something I would have thought possible!

@shoeses Different platforms do have different contracts, at least as far as the game rights themselves are concerned. Like how all of the Xbox One games (including the BC library) transferred straight over to Xbox Series consoles without renegotiation, whereas the OG/360 titles had to be negotiated and added individually to get them on the Xbone in the first place... despite already being available on the Xbox 360 store in many cases!

I am just speculating, but I do find it surprising already that Sonic & Sega Racing is still available, considering its soundtrack, and it seems like that could be a tricky area to work with.

@kiwisoup don’t think they’re pretending anything since they mentioned the reason for it is because they’re on major sales right now right in the article itself.

@BattousaiOP The original article did not have that bit at the end about the sales.

@smoreon I played it on Dolphin on Series X and it looks much better in 4K than on Wii but the frame rate is like on Wii. Decent enough until Xenia gets more optimised for Series X. Best way to play it now outside PC although still without Banjo and Kazooie.

I think that the contracts are different because backwards compatibility uses a new technology that was not considered before Xbox One, so they had to ask the rights owners if they agree with the expanded distribution or the new way to play games via a different interpretation of the code, as the new consoles "translate" the original code to the Xbox One language. Some games are backwards compatible only with the physical version, as if they agreed to the new technology but they didn't agree to the new distribution. That's a weird scenario where you can play some games if you find the disc but the rights owners don't get more money from digital distribution. It's ever weirder considering that a digital copy of the game is downloaded anyway. It's also bad for the preservation of those games.

I agree with @shoeses that some games are oddly omitted but Sega is a publisher that welcomed backwards compatibility with open arms, so perhaps the rights to one of the 90s-00s musical hits (Bellini - Samba De Janeiro?) was impossible or too expensive to renew. Yes, there a couple of Sega games not available. I guess that they don't want to distribute Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) because back in the day Sega stopped manufacturing Sonic & The Black Knight early after release because of its low quality/low scores.

Xbox One contracts might state general Xbox platforms and Series consoles plays Xbox One natively so nothing changes technically.

UPDATE: Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is available again.

Wish they had added kinect games for backward-compatibility 🥲 some people did liked the kinect and at least that would allow some more games not to be left behind. I know the newest xbox doesn't support kinect but still no excuse when it was released yet. Reason why I stayed on Xbox ONE X

@Banjo- This Action Replay code makes the Wii version run at 60fps:
04773008 00000000

I'm not sure that the tech itself is the reason for the change in licensing, as opposed to some wording around the platform definitions, but yeah, MS (and Sony) clearly did something different this past gen, ensuring that the games would carry forward. I figure that the PS3/360/Wii distribution agreements were all made around those specific systems, but MS and Sony decided to future-proof their stores with broader licensing terms the second time around.
Meanwhile, Nintendo just kept on doing what they were doing, and now all of the Wii U and 3DS stuff is gone.

@smoreon Nintendo is the worst, they shut the Wii U and 3DS shops down and, at the same time, is incredibly paranoid about any of their loyal fans playing the games that they own and have been playing for years on any other platform/emulator. Nintendo is the enemy of their own fans and of games preservation and I say this as someone that grew up playing on Nintendo consoles and didn't care about other consoles except Sega's.

So, could I activate that hack on Dolphin on Series X? I had not realised. So do I insert that code somewhere?

@Banjo- Actually they relisted Sonic 06 some time ago. It's only $5 and it's DLC is available for purchase too.

@shoeses Thanks for the update 👍🏻.

@shoeses not on Playstation they haven’t. Their AAA exclusives are always big sellers. Xbox need to release more exlusives, hopefully this year they pull it off!

@Banjo- I hear ya. Grew up with Nintendo (and Sega, to a lesser extent), but was driven away by their decisions- first creative, and now business. Ah, well, still lots of great stuff out there!

On desktop Dolphin, you'd right-click the game and open its Properties.
Then go to the AR Codes tab and paste in the new code, along with a descriptive name.
Make sure that code has a check box in the list after you've created it, and also make sure your main Dolphin settings have "Enable Cheats" checked.
It should be a similar process on Series X, now that it has a proper GUI, but I haven't used it.

@smoreon I feel exactly the same. The creativity and magic of the older games are gone. Perhaps it's because the people working at Nintendo are not the same. Then add how they're managing business since Switch launched and it's like they are two different companies entirely.

I am checking and yes, Dolphin has a GUI on Series X. Menu button is for netplay and view button is settings. If you press X you open the game list but I can't find a way to open properties for any game.

@Banjo- I would've said to press View, but if that just opens the general settings, then I have no idea.
I wonder if the UI for per-game configs isn't there yet, or if it's just hidden well.

@smoreon Yes, the View button always opens settings. I'll try to find out...