Digital Foundry: Microsoft Silently Updated Backwards Compatibility System Bringing Better Performance To Games

Although the team over at Microsoft’s Xbox division is notorious for its billboard support for backwards compatibility in the past handful of years now, the firm is still adamant to continue in accessing legacy titles on the newest hardware on the market. Following the inception of the Xbox Series X, the Xbox company shared that prior generation software would find a new way of processing with better resolution, higher targeted performance, and auto-HDR then.

Additionally, Microsoft went on to reveal that is plans for backward compatibility would extend to majority of the Xbox One platform and previous. So, titles including Xbox 360 and original Xbox releases will be ready at launch. In post-launch, we witnessed the introduction of FPS Boost which enabled a higher refresh rate beyond the intended hardware respected games released on initially. The last game in that bunch came to be Dark Souls III back in July.

However, Microsoft is suspected to also make games benefit with internal patchwork to is OS for Xbox Series consoles from Digital Foundry. When revisiting an Xbox Series Vs. PlayStation 5 comparison for Control, the group remarked that potential revising of the firmware leveled out the performance for the game on Xbox. But, in the latest Digital Foundry Direct Weekly, it is said that a patch to the system for backwards compatibility is the reason now.

You can watch the segment of the show in the video below:

“I have done some digging with sources and it turns out that the game [Control] wasn’t updated, but the virtual machine surrounding it was,” Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter explains. “So I think there may have been an actual patch, but Remedy I don’t think would have anything to do with it. So there was a bottleneck at the system level which was identified and resolved.

“I just want to get it out there that Control on Xbox Series X is basically, pretty much flawless at this point thanks to that,” Leadbetter adds. In the past, we witnessed Microsoft consistency with delivering in-house patchwork for backwards compatibility and it continues to do the same now with this silent update. While it is illustrated to benefit most for Control, it is suggested other titles might find a similar result in higher performance if initially staggered.

Even more, the firm has stated in the past to be aiming to deliver more for the program later this generation. When speaking to Game Informer, Xbox Director of Product Management Jason Ronald explained the team’s ongoing investigating to deliver more releases to the newest system from Microsoft. Now though, it appears that the virtualized system for backwards compatibility is also on the menu for updates to level out titles with fluctuating performance as well.

While this is a worth a celebration for Xbox backwards compatibility, there is still one red flag for the platform – offline play. From a report by ModernVintageGamer, it is revealed that the system’s requirement for an online connection to access in contrast to PlayStation leaves him cautious that the DRM is truly handicapping the service when the online store for respected platforms will inevitably be shutdown. You can read the full report by heading here.

What are your thoughts on the update for the Xbox backwards compatibility improving on titles suffering inconsistent performance?