Phil Spencer answered a lot of questions on Twitter today which is somewhat becoming a tradition each week. Spencer talked about topics ranging from Age of Empires to Project Scorpio. Let’s begin by talking about the games. Many gamers keep on asking him to bring Age of Empires to Xbox One. However, Spencer said that this would be difficult because the game was designed for mouse and keyboard controls. The code is old so porting the game over to Xbox One would be an absolute chore. Don’t expect Age of Empires on Xbox One.
That wasn’t all though. As we all know, many of 2K’s games are coming to Xbox One through backward compatibility so Spencer hoped that Civilization Revolution would make its way to the console eventually. The publisher is making games like Grand Theft Auto 4 backward compatible so I imagine Civilization Revolution is in the pipeline. Now that that’s taken care of, let’s talk about the juicy news. Before we begin, let me just say that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 still isn’t coming to backward compatibility so stop asking!
Spencer is visiting Japan next week to talk to third-party publishers. I imagine this is due to the issue of Japanese games not coming to Xbox One. Hopefully the conversations between Spencer and the publishers will yield fruitful results. I want games like Nioh to come to Xbox One because I want to use my Elite Controller to play them! We’ll keep you posted if Spencer updates us about what transpired in Japan.
Lastly, and quite possibly “bigly”, Phil Spencer confirmed that Project Scorpio would run existing Xbox One games better on the console, not just new titles optimized for it. He said, “Our games, old and new, have to show why someone would choose Scorpio. I feel really good about our progress on that.” I’m glad Microsoft is focusing on making old games look better on the upcoming console, possibly through a boost mode or a 4K texture update, because that’s how you get existing Xbox One owners to upgrade. People get attached to their libraries and existing consoles so they need to see significant enhancements to go out and buy a new machine. Spencer said much more other than these main points so be sure to read his timeline on Twitter.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.