As July slowly comes to a close, culminating a month of thousands of layoffs carried over by Microsoft across its Xbox studios, the company has shared some very different news, as it is slowly rolling out Xbox backward compatibility on PC.

Announced via Xbox Wire, Xbox backward compatibility is available on PC starting today, starting with four Xbox games: BliNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fusion Frenzy.

The four titles are now available to purchase on PC, and are included with all Xbox Game Pass plans. Already-owned digital console licenses carry over to PC, too. The re-releases allow for up to 4x resolution upscaling, and there are some graphics settings to tweak, including anisotropic filtering, "enhanced" anti-aliasing, and Vsync support.

Jason Ronald, VP of Next Generation, Xbox, says the team plans to add more features to eligible games in the future, including achievements to "select" original Xbox games, which will roll out later in the year.

Related:A Kinect game that debuted in 2013 has been revived in the year of our lord 2026

"This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve Xbox games from the past and bring them to PC over time," Ronald says.

The news comes at a tumultuous time for game preservation. At the start of July, PlayStation announced that it's ending production of physical software in January 2028. The move, as the company claimed, comes as "the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs."

Meanwhile, Xbox employees have reportedly been testing a feature that would allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing physical game collections. The reported feature, however, will only work on Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs only, excluding those for the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox console.

Speaking of tumultuous, it's worth remembering that Microsoft is still in its fifth round of mass layoffs since merging with Activision Blizzard, with the company recently confirming plans to cut 3,200 roles across its video game division before the end of the current fiscal year.

Multiple sources impacted by those layoffs recently told Game Developer key Xbox studios could "fall apart" after years of debilitating cuts.

About the Author

Diego Argüello

Contributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina. Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.