While Microsoft has arguably fallen behind in some current-gen gaming console metrics, the company has taken a clear lead among the big-three systems’ backwards-compatibility efforts. That’s been evidenced in a regular drip-feed series of older 360 and OG Xbox games being brought forward to work on Xbox One systems, of which the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch have no peer.
Honestly, these Xbox One announcements come frequently enough to not merit the spotlight treatment.
But Tuesday’s announcement, which was teased a full week earlier, brought the goods with a substantial list of games newly converted to work on Xbox One—and a few Xbox One X “upgrade” surprises, to boot.
The arguable biggest news of the day is that ‘s Xbox 360 version has now been patched to take advantage of Xbox One X hardware. That means, like other Xbox 360 games given the X treatment, will now render at nine times its original 720p resolution. Should you have a 4K TV, an Xbox One X, and a copy of , you’ll be able to play the game at 3840×2160 pixel resolution once its patch launches sometime today.
[Update: The 4K patch is now live, and we have a little, beautiful gallery here for proof. Click any image while in the gallery interface to bring up a full 3840×2160 resolution screenshot captured from our own Xbox One X console.]
This one’s a big deal specifically because fans have waited for years for the game to receive a PC port, which might, among other things, let fans jack up the game’s settings and resolution. Seeing as how Rockstar Games has remained mum on that possibility going on nearly eight years, we imagine this XB1X update will remain the only 4K way to play the game for some time.
The other Xbox 360 games slated to receive this same upscaling treatment today include , , , , and . Out of all of those, only hasn’t received a PC port to let players manually crank the game’s resolutions or settings higher than originally intended.
Microsoft’s push to port more original Xbox games to Xbox One continued on Tuesday as well, with a whopping 19 pre-360 games coming to Xbox One by the end of April. These will land in two phases, and the first one, coming April 17, will include the never-ported-elsewhere Sega classic and the “complete” version of .
On April 26, the back-compat collection will expand with six Star Wars-themed games: both original games, , , , and . (The first RPG already landed on Xbox One back-compat last year.)
The rest of the announced original-Xbox back-compat games are as follows: , , , , , and on April 19; and , , , and on April 26. (European Xbox One owners will also get an exclusive shot at on April 26.)
