An Xbox team has been created to ensure that older and recently released games will continue to be supported and available in the future.

Backwards compatibility has been one of the positive aspects of the Xbox One, as Microsoft was the company that sought to support games from its two previous consoles. This approach ultimately led to changes for Sony (without it, PlayStation 4 titles probably wouldn’t run on PlayStation 5…), and the Redmond-based company is looking to continue on this path, with the Xbox series running some of the games released for the original Xbox (even though that console was released in 2001).

Emails obtained by Windows Central have been confirmed by Microsoft. Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that the new team is focused on game preservation, in an effort to continue backwards compatibility so that future generations of gamers can access these Xbox games. Meanwhile, the emails also mentioned something else: Bond also hinted at a more powerful, half-generation Xbox. So not only the PlayStation 5 Pro is in the pipeline, but also a new Xbox console whose name we won’t try to guess.

We have recently heard about two rumored hardware. One is the Xbox Series X, which will do away with the Blu-ray drive, and the other is an Xbox handheld. So one or the other could become reality in the future. In the meantime, let’s go back to Bond’s emails for a moment: He also mentioned Diablo IV. He said that the Xbox has become the number one platform for Blizzard’s product with the launch of the game on the Xbox Game Pass on March 28, but this sounds like PR hype, as Bond did not back it up with any statistics.

Game preservation should be encouraged. Nintendo condemns it (remember that the Super Mario 3D All-Stars Collection was only sold for a limited time; they also had several games that were only playable for a short time), and emulation is not a solution either, as again the big N does not like it.

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