Xbox One controller

Microsoft has plans in place to add one of the most-requested features missing from its next-gen Xbox One video game console — backwards compatibility. Responding to an audience member who asked if there were plans in place for Xbox 360 emulation on the Xbox One at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, the platform holder’s Partner Development Lead Frank Savage confirmed that such plans do indeed exist, reports Kotaku.

“There are [plans for Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One], but we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately,” Savage stated. “It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself.”

When they launched this past November, neither Microsoft’s Xbox One nor Sony’s PlayStation 4 came equipped with backwards compatibility for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, their respective predecessors. The Xbox 360 was capable of playing select original Xbox games. Early PlayStation 3 models were capable of full PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility, while later versions of the console were only able to play digital PS2 games purchased on the PlayStation Store, not original disc-based versions of PS2 titles.

This past January, Sony announced its PlayStation Now service, which will allow users to stream rented or purchased digital versions of select PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 games to a variety of devices. There are plans to eventually expand the service to include PlayStation 4 titles.

In its report, Kotaku points out that Savage offered up no details of how Xbox 360 emulation might work on the Xbox One. His quote would seem to imply that the goal is to allow gamers to simply play Xbox 360 discs on their Xbox Ones, but Savage stopped short of confirming as much.

Source: Kotaku