"If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," said former Xbox chief Don Mattrick, explaining why Xbox One wouldn't play Xbox 360 games mere days after it was unveiled. If that's the case, then the Xbox world under new division head Phil Spencer may be as backwards as the average Justin Bieber hat. According to Xbox partner development lead Frank Savage, Microsoft is working on a solution to get Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, but players at home may never get to experience it themselves.

When asked by an audience member at Microsoft's Build developer conference whether the company had plans for backwards compatibility on Xbox One, Savage responded in the affirmative but with a serious caveat. Getting software made for drastically different hardware to run on another machine is a tricky proposition.

"There are [plans], but we're not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately," said Savage, as reported by Kotaku Australia. "It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there's nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself."

A Microsoft representative reiterated Savage's statement to Engadget in a follow up inquiry, but also stressed that there are no official plans to bring Xbox 360 compatibility to consumer Xbox Ones any time soon. "It is super challenging to emulate two completely different architectures, and there aren't currently any plans to build this," said the spokesperson.

Players clinging desperately to those copies of Perfect Dark: Zero andBomberman: Act Zero, don't get rid of your Xbox 360s just yet.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/04/08/mi...ity-on-xbox-o/