Back in 2013, Microsoft had officially stated that there would be no backwards compatibility on Xbox One, among other things. They have since changed their minds about almost everything, and from the look of the Scorpio, due later this year, it appears that being able to play older games on a newer console will still happen.
How is this possible, you might be asking? Xbox Core Platform group program manager Kevin Gammill has said that it will be built in a way that if developers of older consoles want to create games for it, they won't need to upgrade anything.
Xbox will do it for them. The Scorpio Development Kit will be a modified Xbox One kit, in simple terms.
Does this mean that the people at Xbox will be putting the programming hours into getting the most out of games provided by developers? If so, we could see development times doubling to ensure stability. Instead, it may be like a gaming PC, which despite running the latest iteration of "Assassin's Creed Syndicate," can still play older PC titles with a little ramping up of the visuals or performance. PC titles can vary in performance based on your hardware configuration. Today's Blu-Ray players do that with DVDs all the time, so it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.
Why doesn't the PlayStation 4 do the same thing with older PlayStation game discs?
To understand this situation, you need to grasp the concept of 64x and 86x software. 64x is actually more powerful, being almost like the denominator of a fraction (1/64 is greater than 1/86). 86x cannot handle 64x due to a lack of processing power.
PS4 programs follow a similar rule. The technology used to run a PS4 game won't even recognize a PS3 title unless it's installed directly to the hard drive through an emulator (hence the PS2 on PS4 library in the PlayStation Store, PS Now streaming, and various ports and remakes from the last generation).
Yes, it gets confusing if you're not tech-savvy.
Gammill says that Scorpio is the result of seeing what the Xbox One and Xbox One S can do
By supplying an eight-core CPU at 2.3 Ghz, the Scorpio will be able to outperform the Xbox One S by nearly a third, meaning much less buffering and screen stutter from frame rate drops. Fans of open-world titles like "Assassin's Creed" and "Skyrim" will appreciate this, as the game won't be as likely to "choke up" when loading new areas. Of course, the developers might take this as an opportunity to push the graphics and memory even harder.
It seems Microsoft has learned a lot in the last four years.
