‘Red Dead Redemption’ And More Added To Xbox One Backwards Compatibility
Another batch of not-yet-officially released backwards compatible titles for the Xbox One were discovered over the weekend. Rockstar Games’ title is the obvious headliner, but the real question remains: When are all of these games finally going to be released?
Red Dead Redemption is available to download from the Xbox Store for those who own a digital copy of the game. For those that don’t, it is a $29.99 purchase from the Xbox Marketplace for the Xbox 360.
It will take some extra steps to download the game from the Xbox One Store, however. ICXM helpfully provided the path of searching for “ASleepingMonkey” in the console’s friend finder. View this user’s profile and selecting the “Following” tab to bring up a list of other gamertags and games that he is following. Red Dead Redemption is listed. Choosing the game will bring up its page, and then select the “Launch game” or “See in store” options to go to the Xbox Store page where the game can be installed if already purchased.
YouTube channel VG Tech performed an early frame rate comparison test for Red Dead Redemption and it is playable in its current state. There are some frame rate dips down to 25-28 fps, particularly in the town sections, but it does well overall.
This is the latest Xbox 360 title that is close to being released for the Xbox One. Halo Wars was also spotted, along with Alan Wake: American Nightmare and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night over the weekend. Left 4 Dead 2 was accidentally released not long ago. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is also playable, while DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops was discovered despite the game not being playable yet.
It’s important to note that Microsoft has changed the release of Xbox One backwards compatible titles following the January update. Games will no longer be released in a batch once a month. Instead, the games will be released as they are ready.
“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. “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.”
The problem is, many of these games have released early and are mostly playable with no comment from Microsoft. The software maker supposedly released a patch to hide some of the available games, but some community members of both NeoGAF and Reddit are reporting the ability to still find and play them.
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 Rockstar Games]
