Report: Microsoft Has a New Team Working on Game Preservation

Microsoft has reportedly created a new game preservation team within its Xbox division that will be focusing on ensuring the compatibility of current Xbox games on future hardware. Sarah Bond, the new President of Xbox detailed the company’s work on game preservation and other priorities in an internal email obtained by Windows Central.

“We have formed a new team dedicated to game preservation, important to all of us at Xbox and the industry itself,” Bond said in the email. “We are building on our strong history of delivering backwards compatibility to our players, and we remain committed to bringing forward the amazing library of Xbox games for future generations of players to enjoy.”

Game preservation has become an important topic in recent years as we see more and more games being delisted from digital stores, or companies making their old games unplayable after shutting down their servers. As an example, today, April 8 is the day Nintendo chose to shut down online services for all Wii U and 3DS games.

Microsoft probably deserves credit for taking game preservation more seriously than its console competitors. Windows PCs can run games and apps written decades ago, but current-gen Xbox consoles can run hundreds of backwards-compatible Xbox 360 games, as well as dozens of original Xbox games. Except for Kinect games, all Xbox One games are also backwards compatible on Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Backwards compatibility was much easier to implement on Xbox and PlayStation consoles when they transitioned to AMD x86 CPUs during the previous console generation. Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox plans may include the move to ARM CPUs, and in that case, a compatibility layer would be required to make games from previous generations compatible on the new hardware. This is probably something that Microsoft’s new game preservation team will be working on.

In her email to employees, Sarah Bond also reiterated that Microsoft is “moving full speed ahead on our next generation hardware, focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation.” AI is also part of the company’s next-gen plans, with Bond saying “We are innovating in Gaming AI, focused on delivering player-first, developer-first value for discovery, engagement, and creator velocity.”