For two generations now, Microsoft has endeavored to make its consoles widely backward compatible, while sometimes offering a nice touch of polish to yesterday’s games. But after years of volunteerism, plans seem set to change for Xbox gamers.
Are we witnessing the end of an era? While the American manufacturer recently celebrated the 20 years of the launch of the first Xbox of the name, the players learned with a certain sadness the end of the vast program of backward compatibility which makes it possible to take advantage of the game libraries of the first two generations of consoles on the next two. To justify this announcement, Microsoft invoked legal restrictions, but also technical. These same considerations are mentioned today to explain the discontinuation of another house specificity: the FPS Boost.
135, the golden ratio
In order to take advantage of yesterday’s classics on constantly evolving hardware, Microsoft has been offering real improvements in comfort for several years, starting with a higher frame rate, but also the automated management of HDR. Unfortunately for neo-retro gamers, Microsoft seems to have made the rounds of upgradeable Xbox games, as project manager Jason Ronald explains at the microphone ofIron Lords Podast :
Currently more than 130 games benefit from FPS Boost, and we are constantly looking for new improvements such as improved framerate or HDR automation. Corn I can tell you that we have tried to apply the technology we currently use for FPS Boost to much more than these 130 games, and we sometimes encounter bugs at 80% progress: in these cases, our teams do all they can to find a solution, but that is not always the case. I have in mind a very specific game where an event that occurs at the very end does not trigger because of the too fast framerate.
Iron Sky’s the limit
The tools developed in-house would therefore no longer make it possible to easily manage the improvement in the frame rate, and we understand (obviously) between the lines that Microsoft does not intend to manage incompatibility problems on a case-by-case basis. In order for new games from the Xbox 360 and Xbox One game libraries to benefit from FPD Boost again, developers will have no choice but to find a new way to automate the process, while avoiding the aforementioned bugs.
However, Ronald does not exclude the idea, and all the same keeps the door ajar … even if it will be necessary a priori to show some patience:
Our current technique has already enabled us to enhance Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, and if we will continue to look for new ways to improve other titles, we have nothing more to announce in the near future.. For now, we have reached our limits.
What do you expect from Microsoft in terms of backward compatibility? And which titles would you like to see take advantage of FPS Boost in the future? Let us know your upscaled opinions in the comments below!
