Xbox Series X Backward Compatibility to Add Visual Enhancement to Older Games

The Xbox Series X will support backward compatibility for thousands of games from the original Xbox, the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, and many of those games will play and look better on the Series X, according to the console's director of program management, Jason Ronald.

Xbox and Xbox 360 titles will be playable in HDR color without performance hiccups, and at up to 120 frames per second in some cases.

"Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD," Ronald said Thursday in a blog post. "No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game. This means that all titles run at the peak performance that they were originally designed for, many times even higher performance than the games saw on their original launch platform, resulting in higher and more steady framerates and rendering at their maximum resolution and visual quality."

Quick Resume, a Series X feature that allows players to keep multiple games suspended at once for faster play resumption, will also work with backward-compatible games.

The Xbox Series X is set for a holiday 2020 release.