Polygon reports Xbox Senior Director Albert Penello’s statement that the Xbox One may get backwards compatibility down the line. The clincher, however, would be that this would come through Microsoft’s cloud service Azure.
In Penello’s words, this is where Team Xbox struggles to communicate the value of cloud gaming. As he puts it, it can feasibly do all these different functions that would leave consumer credulous.
Of course, this is the same promissory note Sony provided their fans when it comes to backwards compatibility of the Playstation 4, using their recently acquired cloud gaming service Gaikai. Neither console can offer this feature at launch.
When one looks at recent backwards compatibility solutions, between Wii U being built on top of the Wii hardware, Playstation Vita offering a limited UMD exchange program, and all three hardware companies outright reselling older games from several generations, the cloud genuinely offers new possibilities.
Momentarily, both Sony and Microsoft intend to continue their current gen consoles, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 for the next few years.
I do have to disagree with Penello’s statement that consumers misunderstand the cloud and its functions. Without getting into their recent communication concerns, Gaikai and OnLive have been around for several years already. Although both services were available for very limited markets, there is enough information on how they worked out there for gamers to be well informed, or to reappraise their knowledge anytime they wanted to. And they know that OnLive still continues to struggle with the limitations placed on them by how global internet standards just have not caught up with the technology available.
Cloud computing on the Xbox One remains a hard sell, but for those of us who can make use of it, backwards compatibility may be a way forward.
Source: Polygon
