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The Xbox Series X, the new console Microsoft will launch in 2020, will feature backward compatibility to support “thousands of your favorite games across four generations of gaming,” Microsoft said in a statement following the console’s reveal at The Game Awards 2019.
Furthermore, this compatibility will extend to “all your Xbox One gaming accessories,” the company said, and existing subscriptions to services on Xbox One will carry over to Xbox Series X as well.
“We’re also investing in consumer-friendly pathways to game ownership across generations,” Microsoft said. Beginning with Halo Infinite next year, first-party games, at minimum, will “support cross-generation entitlements and your Achievements and game saves are shared across devices.”
Microsoft has been at the forefront of backward compatibility on the current console generation, opening a program in 2015 that led to hundreds of Xbox 360 titles being made compatible for Xbox One, many of them offered for free on Xbox Live Games With Gold. It followed that with backward compatibility for dozens of original Xbox games beginning in the fall of 2017.
