Xbox One not backwards compatible

Xbox 360 owners won’t be able to play their games on the console’s successor, Microsoft has confirmed.

Xbox Live VP Marc Whitten told The Verge that the newly-announced Xbox One console will have no backwards compatibility.

"The system is based on a different core architecture, so back-compat doesn’t really work from that perspective," he said.

This is nothing new, of course. The Xbox 360 only played a limited number of original Xbox games, while rival PS3 was not compatible with any PS2 games.

Back in February, Sony confirmed that PS4 will not be backwards compatible either, but users will be able to play PS3 games via a streamed back catalogue set up with the help of cloud gaming service Gaikai, which Sony acquired last year.

Whether or not Microsoft has any plans for a similar service has yet to be confirmed, but given the modest collection Xbox Originals available for download on 360, it’s at least a possibility.