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[Update] Red Dead And Others Appeared As Backward Compatible By Accident
Update: As we mentioned in our original story, the appearance of Red Dead Redemption, Halo Wars, Left 4 Dead 2 and other games as backward compatible over the weekend wasn't a guarantee of imminent release. Microsoft has confirmed that these appeared accidentally and they are not ready for distribution.
Xbox spokesman Larry Hryb (also known as Major Nelson) cleared things up on Twitter last night.
All 360 games are tested through an emulator for quality. Due to an error, games in test were temp avail. Apologies https://t.co/pyANPhdRxj
— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) February 7, 2016
We've not yet received a direct response from Microsoft. Should there be additional information to share, we'll update again. The good news? We know these games are in the works, even if we won't be getting them right away.
Original Story:
Though Microsoft hasn't made a public announcement yet, it seems that Red Dead Redemption, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo Wars, and Castlevania: Symphony of The Night are technically now backwards compatible on Xbox One. The process is not straightforward, and it is unclear whether this intentional or a testing phase gone awry.
The listings for the games were discovered by Twitter user @rockohoward on the Xbox One marketplace as he was looking for information about the next set of games that would be part of Microsoft's next backwards compatibility update. He wrote about his findings on his site Excitehype and posted a video of what he says is Tekken Tag Tournament 2 running on the Xbox One:
The process to download these games is convoluted, requiring you to have a digital copy of the Xbox 360 game (putting a disc copy of the game in the drive won't work, we've checked), and follow "rockohoward" on Xbox One to the listings for the games he's downloaded.
People who have completed this process have posted images reinforcing the many reports we've seen pop up:
@ZTGD @Futterish Mines installing!! pic.twitter.com/SCKUNNWtb5
— John Dubya (@JohnDubyaUK) February 6, 2016
We've reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update accordingly if they give us one. As of right now, we have not been able to duplicate the findings for lack of digital versions of the included games, but opted to share the information in case you own the titles in question and want to attempt this process for yourself.
[Source: Excitehype via NeoGaf]
Our Take
On surface level, this seems to be pretty legitimate but there might be some valid reasons as to why Microsoft hasn't released these to the public yet. They could be unoptimized and untested. They might not run even if you do get them installed on your console. Of course, the opposite could be true too. These could run just fine and Microsoft just wasn't ready to make the announcement for PR reasons. Just exercise caution if you're planning on downloading these games through this process.
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