If it could play every Xbox game without an always on internet connection or subscription then they have my interest.

It could, but it won't. Not legally anyways.

“and if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike”

Never going to happen

For only $14.99 a month!/s

Even steel battalion?

🤣

doubt

I have never owned a xbox, bar 360 I picked up for nothing one time and played what stuck in it, and I would buy a fully backwards compatible offline system.

Kind of a hyperbolic nothing burger of a headline. The current Xbox uses emulation to support the Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One library. And it doesn't support the whole library and almost certainly never will, the few remaining titles are likely prohibitively expensive and complicated to support for very niche audiences.

In other words, this headline is both obvious, who would expect them to not support their emulator on new hardware? And wrong, it won't support every Xbox game ever made.

Yeah I know it will never happen. But IF.

Backwards compatibility was a main selling point of Windows and is a big part of what made Microsoft successful. This was particularly true in the enterprise world where old apps had to continue working despite an OS upgrade. But it matters at the consumer level too of course. Everyone expects their PC apps to just work, even through major changes like the OS switching from 32 to 64 bit.

So it's kind of nuts that Microsoft ever considered this optional for their game console in the first place. Obviously they were able to use market dominance and invest lots of capital to make Xbox one of the top console brands regardless. But it's still dizzying how MS forgot such a core lesson that put them ahead of market competitors for decades.

Will it play my copy of Ride to Hell: Retribution for the Xbox 360?

I don't think the chances are that remote.

Microsoft values backwards compatibility a lot. At least in windows. So from a technical viewpoint, the older Xbox games are probably already compatible with the newest Xbox. If that is the case, technically it would be as easy as removing the arbitrary check that the Xbox version matches. Maybe add a frame rate limiter so old games that calculated time for physics based on frame rate don't break.

From a business perspective, Microsoft does not sell as many remakes/remasters as other companies (like Nintendo, that just sells you an old game+emulator for absurd prices).

In fact, with gamepass, Microsoft states that it doesn't want to sell you games. It just wants you to spend as much time in Xbox/WinPC paying their subscriptions.

Allowing old games will mean bringing them to gampass too. Which is what they want. They want as many games in gamepass as possible.

Are you familiar with the person who is now running Xbox? Before her appointment I would have 100% agreed with you, but now I just can’t see them making a good decision based on what I’ve seen so far. I’d love to be wrong.

Not sure I believe that given the popularity XP still has.