Xbox’s Next Console Will Keep Your Game Library Intact With Backward Compatibility

If you’ve been holding onto your Xbox library, there’s finally good reason to feel confident about its future. Microsoft has confirmed that backwards compatibility will be a key part of the next generation of Xbox.

While the Xbox team has been dropping quiet hints over the past year, we finally got the big-picture confirmation during yesterday’s announcement.

Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, when announcing partnership with AMD, mentioned that future Xbox hardware will deliver “a deeper level of visual quality and immersive gameplay… all while maintaining compatibility with your existing library of Xbox games.”

That means your current games aren’t getting locked away when the next console shows up. Whether you’re gaming on a traditional console, something portable, or streaming from the cloud, your existing library is coming along for the ride.

Now, before you get too excited, Bond specifically mentioned “existing” titles. So no, it doesn’t sound like new backwards-compatible games are being added to the list just yet. But still, this early commitment shows that Xbox is thinking long-term and making sure players keep what they’ve already paid for.