For more than a year now, you have been able to play Xbox 360 games on an Xbox One or Xbox One S (reviewed here). Not all of your old library of games are playable, but there are well over 300 titles currently available. Xbox is also adding to this list regularly as new titles are checked and cleared for release.But do you have to do anything different to get it to work? Exactly how will Xbox 360 games play on an Xbox One? And can you buy Xbox 360 games on an Xbox One? Here's our handy guide to the feature.Microsoft first announced that it would be adding backwards compatibility to its current generation console during E3 2015, and the initial wave of 104 games arrived in November that year.The Xbox One is able to play Xbox 360 games through emulation software that makes the console think it's a last generation machine for the purposes of playing older games.When a supported Xbox 360 game is started on the machine, the Xbox One opens the emulator and, in all regards, the game works as if it was running on an Xbox 360.
The 360's opening screen appears first then the game will load.All other aspects and features that would normally be available on an Xbox 360 are be available on the Xbox One too, including the hub (which can be opened through a simultaneous press of the menu and view buttons on the Xbox One controller). In addition, all new features of the Xbox One work, including the ability to take screen grabs and record and share video of gameplay.Although Sony opted for a paid route to play PS3 games on a PS4, through the PlayStation Now cloud gaming platform, Microsoft decided to offer its backwards compatibility for free as part of the November update at the end of 2015.If you own a supported game already, you do not have to pay anything to play it on Xbox One.Obviously, it costs to purchase new Xbox 360 games that work on the machine.Xbox One backwards compatibility works with digital content as well as disc games. In fact, if you enter a supported disc into your Xbox One, the machine will download the game from Xbox Live first - although you will need the disc to be in the machine each time you play.
If you own a digital copy of a supported game it appears in your games list ready for download. Check your Games and Apps hub to see if any are listed among the games yet to be installed.Since the March 2016 update compatible Xbox 360 games have been listed for purchase on the Xbox One game store. If you are an Xbox Live Gold member, you now also see free Xbox 360 games to download each month alongside Xbox One titles as part of the Games for Gold scheme.That means you get two free Xbox One games and two free Xbox One games a month.Prices for the Xbox 360 games on the online store vary, but start at around £3.If you originally set your Xbox 360 to save games to the cloud you will be able to download the save files to the Xbox One version and carry on. The cloud files are permanently associated with your gamertag so the Xbox One should do this automatically.If you only saved your in-game progress locally, to the hard drive, you will need to restart your Xbox 360 and save them to the cloud instead.
If you no longer have your Xbox 360, sadly you won't be able to access the files.There are now more than 300 Xbox 360 titles available as part of the backwards compatibility scheme.The company's plan is to eventually support every game it feasibly can bar a few that cannot be made compatible due to requiring additional accessories to run. These include games like the original Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, plus any that worked with the original Kinect. Even if you have the Xbox One Kinect, it will not be compatible with previous Xbox 360 Kinect games.Here's a full list of the Xbox 360 games that are currently available with backwards compatibility for Xbox One (as of 23 February 2017): Genre: First Person Shooter LittleBigPlanet 2: Move PackTHIS CRATE IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR YOUR COUNTRY Please select from these other awesome subscriptions PICK YOUR CRATE GET LOOT CRATE GET LOOT PETS GET LOOT WEAR We will never share your information. Halo is one of the most influential series in the history of gaming, but after spending time with The Master Chief Collection — a compilation of the four main titles remastered for Xbox One — it’s striking to me just how different these games are from almost everything out there today.
While 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved may have been the first truly viable first-person shooter on a console, introducing now-standard features like recharging health, limited weapon loadouts, and easy access to grenades, the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield have spun the genre off in a different direction, reducing their single-player modes to linear shooting galleries that serve as trial-and-error tests of memory. Halo is about space — the vast, open spaces you navigate as the Master Chief, battling enemies and jockeying for position over twisting terrain. Halo is about strategy — the deft strategy you need to employ to take on hordes of aliens that can outflank, outwit, and outgun you. Halo is about physics — the bouncy, supple physics you have to master if you’re ever to take on a giant spider-tank in a dune buggy, neon plasma fire raining down around you. Halo is unpredictable, colorful, and joyous. All of this has been true since the original Halo, which is why The Master Chief Collection represents such excellent value.
The four mainline Halo games all look and play great on Xbox One, although the precise details of their upgrades differ. Halo: Combat Evolved is based on the 2011 anniversary remake for Xbox 360, this time running in 1080p resolution and at 60 frames per second. Halo 3 and 4 are essentially the Xbox 360 games with the same 1080p/60fps boost. 2004’s Halo 2 has received the most attention here, getting an anniversary visual makeover of its own along with reworked cutscenes and overhauled sound; as with Halo: CE, you can flip between original and remastered versions any time at the touch of a button. It doesn't quite look like a modern Xbox One game, but the revamp is more than enough to let you play the series from beginning to end without any jarring jump or drop in graphical quality. Speaking of which, there's no need to do that — all content is unlocked from the start, with each games’ missions accessible in any order you like. The focus on Halo 2 is somewhat unfortunate, because for my money it’s the weakest of the series — at least as a single-player game.
(Multiplayer is a different story; see the sidebar for more). The basic action is as tight and fun as ever, but too often the levels descend into the directed corridor shooting of 2004 contemporaries, and the gambit of introducing a second protagonist for much of the game doesn’t pay off. Those levels, in which you play as an alien soldier called the Arbiter, don’t feel different enough from Master Chief’s to make them worthwhile, but they’re more frequently peppered with boring slogs against an uninteresting zombie-like enemy known as the Flood. And the writing reaches a nadir even for Halo, with an interminable focus on Star Wars-prequel-style politics and a cliffhanger ending that’s no less frustrating ten years on. The other games aren’t without their flaws, either. Halo 4 is astonishingly beautiful but takes too many cues from its contemporaries, with flashy scripted sequences and unnecessary additions like a sprint button. Halo: CE holds up more than well enough today, but suffers from repetitive level design in its latter half, much of which also involves the Flood.
And Halo 3, otherwise my personal favorite for its expansive, liberating scale, hits the lowest point in the entire series with an awful and confusing trek into the bowels of a Flood-infested spaceship. The plot is nonsense across the entire saga, of course, taking a wrong turn toward incomprehensible technobabble somewhere near the start of Halo 2 and never really righting itself. This is a sci-fi universe carved from pure cheese: a universe of reptilian aliens, ring-shaped planet-slash-superweapons, and a sultry AI to serve as the inevitable damsel in distress. Master Chief himself is less charismatic protagonist than anonymous, armor-clad vessel for machismo. But the setting still manages to hold my attention in certain ways. Halo’s worlds feel truly alien thanks to some unmistakable architectural design that blends monolithic buildings into the landscape; even the first game stands out as artistically original. And an evocative way with words — who can forget The Silent Cartographer or Guilty Spark — lends dynamism to the frantic pacing even if you’re not quite sure what’s going on.
None of these games are perfect, but all of them are excellent. This is because original developers Bungie more or less nailed the way Halo was meant to play 13 years ago, and most subsequent tweaks have been minor and unobtrusive. It's the rock-paper-scissors dynamic of guns, grenades, and melee. It’s the seamless transitions between outdoors and in, vehicles and legwork. Most of all, it’s the sense that you could tackle an arena a thousand times and never see events play out the same way twice. Yes, some of these arenas border on the uninspired. But even then, Halo gives you the tools to make your own fun. At $60, The Master Chief Collection is an easy sell for Xbox One owners. Halo fans will want to pick it up because these are the best versions of all four games to date, with the neat bonus of access to the Halo 5 beta next month. Series newcomers will find this collection the perfect entry point, too, with a ton of content to play on a console that — like the PlayStation 4 — still doesn't have a ton.