HDR is enabled system-wide for BC games yes, Witcher 2 and RDR in 4k yes (both are X enhanced I think), but for the framerate and the other games we don't know if those are part of the "select" games to benefit from theses enhancements.
Xbox Details Their Backwards Compatibility Plans Including System-Level HDR and Doubling the Target Framerates/Resolution of Select Games
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Wow thanks! This is amazing!
Just being able to play Lost Odyssey in 4K HDR with fast loading is going to be great!
Lost Odyssey doesn't really need 60fps since it's a turn based RPG anyway, but I would love to play the Witcher series and Red Dead in 60fps!
The great thing is it will just work. Like on PC, no "boosting", that term doesn't even exist on PC. You are just running the game with better specs. I think it's a big benefit that Microsoft is running their "vm"-like architecture because it gives them great control over the game vm and it seems that shows to a great degree and especially it assures compatibility for the future of Xbox games, putting confidence spending money on that ecosystem.
Please do correct me if I've misread but, Xbox Series X is aiming to have the current BC titles from the original Xbox, 360, that currently are BC for the Xbox One and also including all Xbox One titles, while even further improving upon the IQ, yes? (Seems too good to be true.) (I might just buy my first Xbox since the original if so.)
Just a reminder before someone points out that not all games might be compatible: Kinect games will most likely not work. Just in case someone tries to come up with a "Microsoft lied!"-narrative.
Wasn't there some games where some things were tied to frame rates?
I remember hearing that Dark Souls, I think, had weapon degradation tied to frame rate...
I vaugely remember some mod that made it 60fps broke the game...
I remember hearing that Dark Souls, I think, had weapon degradation tied to frame rate...
I vaugely remember some mod that made it 60fps broke the game...
Yea they covered that, those games just wont be able to get a fps upgrade over their original cap due to how they were fundamentally designed. It should still benefit from having frame dips to potentially being a locked 30 though.
Yeah, you're probably right. I saw a couple people making a stink about it, but it's likely nothing. You'd have to think, seeing how important it was to people this generation, that Sony has some sort of plan for BC, even on a smaller scale.
Yeah, they have their plan for BC, even if it's just for PS4 and not as impressive.
Not really worth worrying about until their next events tbh.
It will be like on PC when console games will have a wide range of graphical options to change. Until then, whether it is boost mode or vm or whatever, 99% of BC games will under utilize both systems unless specifically patched by the developer on a game per game basis.
EDIT: The auto HDR sounds great though and depending on how well it works, that would be something better than PC that is trailing behind in terms of HDR.
First they need to make Otogi 1 & 2 BC which would be enhanced to 4k-ish as standard for BC OG Xbox Games. I think it's unlikely they could increase the framerate by double without breaking the game due to Japanese developers in general, yet alone From Software, typically tying everything else to the frame time especially back then.
The graphical options exist because of many configurations out there on PC. This is not a problem in the console space because target machines are still limited in terms of configuration. But we are slowly getting there. More and more games offer flexibility by implementing DRS and unlocked fps modes which is great because that future proofs the games which will then be more attractive to buy, even if they are already a few years old.
How both consoles are utilized by old games we will see but currently it is reasonable to assume MS does a better job for old games. But who knows, perhaps Sony can surprise us.
True but the great thing about the pc off is how far dodders can take it.
I doubt these enhancements will come close to what Enb's do for some titles.
It's great to see this implemented though, can't wait to see the results it gives.
Well, they would have lied. They said all Xbox One games and accessories will work on Series X. If my Kinect and the games that use it don't work, they have lied to me.
I don't know if that is still true if an accessory is officially dead. Is Kinect officially dead according to MS?
Edit: It is dead.
So right now, Xbox One can play certain Xbox and Xbox 360 games.
Microsoft uses software emulation and has a dedicated team that went thru specific games, making them backwards compatible, run well, etc. Once Xbox One X came out, certain games benefitted and were "Xbox One X Enhanced" - meaning better IQ, higher resolution, frame rates, etc.
You can see the difference in some games below:
Sometime last year, the backwards compatibility team was put on pause, and they started working on Xbox One --> Xbox Series X backwards compatibility. Their goal is to have almost every title backwards compatible, and hopefully provide improvements (IQ, Frame-rate, etc.) to various titles.
I believe once the Series X launches, they'll start working on adding more Xbox and 360 games to BC, and keep enhancing those games & Xbox One games. They've done a great job so far. Hopefully we find out more in the next few months.
Kinect is a dead unsupported platform. You can't play Mass Effect 3 with the Smartglass and Kinect 1 additions but you can still play the game.
what are you playing now on Kinect
Were there any "Kinect only" Xbox One games? Fitness games and Just Dance, I'd imagine. There are people out there using the Xbox One Kinect with a USB adapter to use it on Xbox One S and Xbox One X consoles.
360 kinect only games don't work via backwards compatibility. They were very clear and upfront about that when they started the b/c program.
I'll be interested to see if the Xbox One Kinect can be used on Series X using that USB adapter. I never did get around to playing Crimson Dragon.
My bet would be no but weirder things have happened.
On a different note, I was just playing Sonic Generstions. That game seems like a good candidate for the framerate increase. It already looks fantastic in 4k on One X. It has a PC version, so the 60fps should work fine. And it was a Games with Gold game recently, so lots of people will have it.
There are a lot of games I'm looking at playing today and i keep thinking "well, I'll wait until it gets faster load times on series X". Fighting games especially.
360 kinect only games don't work via backwards compatibility. They were very clear and upfront about that when they started the b/c program.
I'll be interested to see if the Xbox One Kinect can be used on Series X using that USB adapter. I never did get around to playing Crimson Dragon.
My bet would be no but weirder things have happened.
On a different note, I was just playing Sonic Generstions. That game seems like a good candidate for the framerate increase. It already looks fantastic in 4k on One X. It has a PC version, so the 60fps should work fine. And it was a Games with Gold game recently, so lots of people will have it.
There are a lot of games I'm looking at playing today and i keep thinking "well, I'll wait until it gets faster load times on series X". Fighting games especially.
Oh yeah, I own that. I bought it on the assumption I'd find a cheap Kinect one day.
I wouldn't even be surprised if Kinect works on the XSX, as long as you have that USB adapter thing they put out after eliminating the port for it on the One S.
This is incredible and exactly what I want to see on PS5, but have accepted we probably wont get. It's a huge incentive to get the console, it's just unfortunate there's not much from the Xbox backlog that really interests me enough for me to consider it.
Absolutely. Past consoles become obselete so you can sell them off, no real need for remasters anymore, start off the gen with your entire backlog at improved performance.
Unlike previous gens when you'd probably have months of playing nothing while waiting for new releases if you bought on day 1, you'll have an almost endless list of stuff to play. It's no longer about casting away the old to move on to the new, it's about upgrading while still having access everything you had, but better. It's almost a bigger deal than new games and other features personally, because cost becomes the ONLY reason not to upgrade to next gen asap.
Microsoft are absolutely leaders in this area, and the gaming community as a whole should be grateful for their efforts. Who knows if the PS5 would've even focused on BC, if Microsoft didn't push it so hard during this generation. We all remember that infamous message from Jim Ryan, downplaying the importance of BC.
Though, from a sales perspective, I do think BC will be far more significant for PS5 than Xbox, regardless of if XSX BC's implementation is superior. This is mainly due to the respective user-bases for each current gen system. The PS4 has well over 100M people invested in the PS ecosystem, while Xbox is roughly half of that. If we suggest that the main short-term goal of BC is to retain current user bases, by extension, we might automatically see sales similar to the current PS4/XBO generation.
Regardless, MS is doing great work here, and I do hope their efforts bring them some success. I also hope that they can keep forcing the industry as a whole to be better re: BC - specifically for consoles.
Though, from a sales perspective, I do think BC will be far more significant for PS5 than Xbox, regardless of if XSX BC's implementation is superior. This is mainly due to the respective user-bases for each current gen system. The PS4 has well over 100M people invested in the PS ecosystem, while Xbox is roughly half of that. If we suggest that the main short-term goal of BC is to retain current user bases, by extension, we might automatically see sales similar to the current PS4/XBO generation.
Regardless, MS is doing great work here, and I do hope their efforts bring them some success. I also hope that they can keep forcing the industry as a whole to be better re: BC - specifically for consoles.
I don't get why people are underselling BC. This is going to be the first console launch in my entire life where I don't buy a launch game. BC and Gamepass has me covered.
I don't think most games have animations that are 120 fps...wouldn't those still run at 30/60 fps that the game was originally designed for?
Inside Xbox Series X: the full specs
This is it. After months of teaser trailers, blog posts and even the occasional leak, we can finally reveal firm, hard …
www.eurogamer.net
Further goodies were to come - and owners of HDR screens are going to love the second key feature I saw. We got to see the Xbox One X enhanced version of Halo 5 operating with a very convincing HDR implementation, even though 343 Industries never shipped the game with HDR support. Microsoft ATG principal software engineer Claude Marais showed us how a machine learning algorithm using Gears 5's state-of-the-art HDR implementation is able to infer a full HDR implementation from SDR content on any back-compat title. It's not fake HDR either, Marais rolled out a heatmap mode showing peak brightness for every on-screen element, clearly demonstrating that highlights were well beyond the SDR range.
"It can be applied to all games theoretically, technically, I guess we're still working through user experiences and things like that but this is a technical demo," revealed Marais. "So this [Halo 5] is four years old, right, so let's go to the extreme and jump to a game that is 19, 20 years old right now - and that is Fusion Frenzy. Back then there's nothing known about HDR, no-one knew about HDR things. Games just used 8-bit back buffers."
This was a show-stopping moment. It was indeed Fusion Frenzy - an original Xbox title - running with its usual 16x resolution multiplier via back-compat, but this time presented with highly convincing, perceptibly real HDR. The key point is that this is proposed as a system-level feature for Xbox Series X, which should apply to all compatible games that don't have their own bespoke HDR modes - and as Marais demonstrated, it extends across the entire Xbox library.
"But you can think of other things that we could do," Marias adds. "Let's look at accessibility. If you have people that cannot read well or see well, you probably want to enhance contrast when there's a lot of text on-screen. We can easily do that. We talked to someone that's colourblind this morning and that's a great example. We just switch on the LUT and we can change colours for them to more easily experience the announcement there."
It's clear that there's a lot of love for the Xbox library and that the back-compat team are hugely excited about what they do. "Hopefully you realise that we are still quite passionate about this," says Peggy Lo. "It's a very personal project for a lot of us and we are committed to keep doing this and making all your games look best on Series X."
Wow. It's not fake HDR either. That's great tech they've got there.Inside Xbox Series X: the full specs
This is it. After months of teaser trailers, blog posts and even the occasional leak, we can finally reveal firm, hard …
Further goodies were to come - and owners of HDR screens are going to love the second key feature I saw. We got to see the Xbox One X enhanced version of Halo 5 operating with a very convincing HDR implementation, even though 343 Industries never shipped the game with HDR support. Microsoft ATG principal software engineer Claude Marais showed us how a machine learning algorithm using Gears 5's state-of-the-art HDR implementation is able to infer a full HDR implementation from SDR content on any back-compat title. It's not fake HDR either, Marais rolled out a heatmap mode showing peak brightness for every on-screen element, clearly demonstrating that highlights were well beyond the SDR range.
"It can be applied to all games theoretically, technically, I guess we're still working through user experiences and things like that but this is a technical demo," revealed Marais. "So this [Halo 5] is four years old, right, so let's go to the extreme and jump to a game that is 19, 20 years old right now - and that is Fusion Frenzy. Back then there's nothing known about HDR, no-one knew about HDR things. Games just used 8-bit back buffers."
This was a show-stopping moment. It was indeed Fusion Frenzy - an original Xbox title - running with its usual 16x resolution multiplier via back-compat, but this time presented with highly convincing, perceptibly real HDR. The key point is that this is proposed as a system-level feature for Xbox Series X, which should apply to all compatible games that don't have their own bespoke HDR modes - and as Marais demonstrated, it extends across the entire Xbox library.
"But you can think of other things that we could do," Marias adds. "Let's look at accessibility. If you have people that cannot read well or see well, you probably want to enhance contrast when there's a lot of text on-screen. We can easily do that. We talked to someone that's colourblind this morning and that's a great example. We just switch on the LUT and we can change colours for them to more easily experience the announcement there."
It's clear that there's a lot of love for the Xbox library and that the back-compat team are hugely excited about what they do. "Hopefully you realise that we are still quite passionate about this," says Peggy Lo. "It's a very personal project for a lot of us and we are committed to keep doing this and making all your games look best on Series X."
I wonder if it will be possible to use this new HDR feature on RDR2 and make it HDR without washing out the colours like the in-game HDR does. It's annoying when I have to disable HDR when I want to play RDR2 since it looks better in SDR, and then re-enable HDR if I want to play a game with an actually good implementation.