Xbox One Backwards Compatibility Adds ‘Alan Wake’, ‘Trials HD’, And More

Older titles such as Red Dead Redemption, Halo Wars, and more have leaked as Xbox One backwards compatible titles. Microsoft announced a new slate of Xbox 360 games that are now playable on the newer consoles, and all but one of those leaked titles is not included.

The new Xbox One backwards compatible titles announced Thursday include Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, LEGO Batman, Sam & Max Beyond Time & Space, and Trials HD. Interestingly, only Remedy Games’ Alan Wake’s American Nightmare was previously leaked, and was just announced as a free addition to those that pre-order Quantum Break for the Xbox One. There’s no word yet on the original Alan Wake, though it too is a pack-in for Remedy’s upcoming title.

It is a good thing, of course, that these games were made available to play on the Xbox One. Console owners have been going through a whirlwind of what games they should expect since Microsoft announced it would add games to the backwards compatible games list as they became available.

“Based on your feedback, the Xbox Engineering team will start to pilot a new way to launch Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles. Starting today, we’ll release titles as they become available, rather than a set monthly launch date,” it was announced by the official Xbox Wire blog in January. “What this means for you is that you won’t have to wait to find out the latest titles; we’ll release whatever is available, when they’re available, once each title has received the engineering and publisher stamp of approval.”

Unfortunately, expectations were thrown off-kilter by a steady stream of leaked titles that included Call of Duty: Black Ops, Left 4 Dead 2, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Red Dead Redemption, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and others. Many of these were playable by those that already owned a digital copy of the game.

Microsoft eventually fixed this issue by making these games unavailable to download and play while connected to the internet. Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb issued an apology and explanation.

“Microsoft tests all Xbox 360 games with our emulator to ensure a quality experience across a breadth of titles,” Hryb wrote on Reddit. “Due to an error, some of the games currently in test were accidentally made available. We have since removed access to those games, and apologize for any confusion this may have caused. We will have more information on upcoming releases soon.”

As the Inquisitr previously covered, Xbox One manages backwards compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Xbox One backwards compatibility has been a hit for the console since it was announced at E3 2015. In addition to providing one of the biggest applause points of Microsoft’s press conference, console owners have dropped more than 21 million hours into playing Xbox 360 games on their new console thus far.

There have been some issues with Xbox One backwards compatibility, though. As Eurogamer recently pointed out, some games have seen performance issues. Halo: Reach‘s performance has been lackluster, rendering some sections of the game nearly unplayable. Likewise, Mass Effect sees problems, including frame rate dips during combat. Gears of War: Judgment is deemed “nearly unplayable due to severe performance drops.”

The performance issues of Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One are largely on a case-by-case basis. Performance is actually improved in some cases, however. For example, games like Hydro Thunder and Condemned see better performance overall, while there are spots of improvements, such as the elevator loading scenes in Mass Effect.

[Image via Remedy Games]