Can you play xbox 360 games on xbox series s

The vast majority of Xbox games are compatible with the Xbox Series X and S. Playing an Original Xbox, Xbox 360 or Xbox One game on your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S is almost as simple as playing a new game on the system.

Follow these steps:

1. Insert the older game disc.

   This step can be skipped if you own the game digitally.

2. Choose the game from the dashboard's My Games menu.

3. Begin playing the game. 

Will Xbox Series X/S Play Older Xbox Games?

In a word, yes! The Xbox Series X and S play the vast majority of your older Xbox games. That includes games from the original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, encompassing four generations of games since the first console's launch in 2001. 

Previously, the Xbox One offered some backwards compatibility for older games but the Xbox Series X and S aims to simplify the process even further. 

For all Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games that you own digitally and have purchased in the past, they're available on your Xbox Series X or S once you log into your Microsoft account. 

Alternatively, if you have an Xbox Series X, you can also use physical game discs by placing them in the console like an Xbox Series X or S game and 'claiming' the game to download digitally. 

The Xbox Series S can't play physical games due to it not having a disc drive.

Are Older Xbox Games Different on Xbox Series X or S?

Generally, the benefits will be connected to loading times and visual quality.

The majority of games will enjoy reduced loading times along with faster frame rates so the game looks smoother. Many games will also have HDR added to them which means the games will look visually much more impressive than before. These enhancements will be most noticeable for Xbox Series X owners with Xbox Series S owners seeing more modest improvements.

They will also all benefit from the Quick Resume feature which means that you can drop in and out of multiple different games without having to wait for them to individually reload on your console.

What Games Will Play on the Xbox Series X or S?

Microsoft aims to make all Xbox One games that do not require Kinect to play on Xbox Series X at launch, with the assumption being that this will also apply to the Xbox Series S. 

Kinect based games won't work on the system as there's no Kinect unit for the Xbox Series X and S.

For Xbox and Xbox 360 games, over 600 are already available with more to be added over the coming months. Microsoft has released an Xbox One backward compatible games list which is regularly updated.

Does Xbox Game Pass Include Backwards Compatible Games? 

Yes. Microsoft is keen to encourage Xbox Game Pass memberships and many backward compatible games are available through the service for Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games. Almost all games on the service should work on both Xbox Series X and S. 

Xbox Series S Review

FAQ

• What Is Xbox Series X or S Backwards Compatibility?

  Xbox Series X/S backwards compatibility refers to the latest games console's ability to play older games from the Xbox back catalog. This includes games from the Original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S offer extensive backwards compatibility between them and past consoles.

  UPDATE: For the authoritative take on Microsoft's new flagship console, Digital Foundry's full Xbox Series X review is now live.

  While Microsoft has been very forthcoming about how backwards compatibility is going to work with Xbox Series X, it hasn't been quite so clear in how the smaller, cheaper Series S console works in running games from prior Xbox generations. Last week, I had the chance to talk with the developers of the hardware and the news sounds very promising. Enhanced backwards compatibility features aren't just the preserve of the more expensive console - Series S has an interesting range of features too.

  Kicking off with games running on the vintage 2001 Xbox - the 'OG' machine - we've confirmed that Xbox Series S will run these games at an enhanced resolution. There's a 3x boost to resolution on both axes, meaning that titles targeting 480p on the original machine will hit a maximum of 1440p on Series S, presumably with a range of performance benefits. The good news continues with the enhanced Xbox 360 titles that were released for Xbox One X. These games will also be enhanced for Series S, this time running with a 2x2 resolution multiplier, bringing titles that ran at native 720p up to 1440p. While this doesn't match the max 4K we saw on Xbox One X, there is the potential for improved performance elsewhere thanks to the much faster Zen 2 CPU architecture. In scenarios where Xbox One X was limited by its Jaguar CPU cores, Series S has much more headroom.

  It's already been confirmed that the ways in which Series S and Series X handle Xbox One titles varies. Only the Series X will benefit from Xbox One X enhancements to existing games - which typically boils down to resolution boosts, higher quality textures and other graphics-driven effects. Xbox Series S brings its additional horsepower to bear in improving the experience of Xbox One S titles instead. This is more limiting in some respects (a game hard-coded to run at 900p will not run any higher on Series S, for example) but the new console benefits from increased resolutions in games that use dynamic resolution scaling, as well as improvements to texture filtering quality. Obviously, running games from solid state storage reduces loading times significantly, while the Auto HDR feature we've seen running on Series X also features on Series S - all games should present nicely on HDR screens, whether they natively support high dynamic range or not. It's a feature I personally can't wait to test. Finally, it goes without saying that CPU-limited titles should also deliver more stable performance at target frame-rates.

  The Digital Foundry team convene to discuss the official reveal of the low-cost, ultra-cute Xbox Series S.

  However, there is one more feature that Microsoft has only mentioned in passing - and now we know more details, we're excited by it: the idea that select Xbox One titles will run at double the frame-rate on the new consoles, including Series S.

  "We designed the Series S to enhance the Xbox One S games in a way that the Xbox One X can't do," system architect Andrew Goossen tells us. "We made it easy for existing Xbox One S games to be updated to run with double the frame-rate when played on Series S as well. When games are updated, existing games can query to determine whether they're running on the new console. And in terms of the performance, the Series S provides well over double the effective CPU and GPU performance over the Xbox One, making it pretty straightforward for the games to do this. And in fact, the Series S GPU runs the Xbox One S games with better performance than the Xbox One X."

  The way Xbox One X handled non-enhanced Xbox One S titles was interesting - effectively users saw the enhanced GPU only running at half-rate, its compute units split between vertex and pixel processing. The new consoles are designed to run legacy Xbox One titles with the full power of both CPU and the new RDNA 2 GPUs.

  "There's no real perf tuning necessary when you do this, and so often it's just as easy as changing three lines of code, and then the game works." Goossen adds. "Even when it's not that easy, the fixes are still pretty minor. We had one triple-A title where doubling the frame-rate really worked perfectly, except that the crowd animation was twice as fast as normal. And so, those sorts of fixes are typically very, very easy for developers to go fix. We're working with game developers and publishers to update [their titles]. It'll basically be select games that run at a doubled frame-rate on the Series S."

  Some games will be able to see this functionality enabled by the developer themselves, while others may be collaborations between the game maker and Microsoft's compatibility team.

  "In some cases, for more service-based games or games that are still have active communities, it'll actually be easier for the developer to do it," says Xbox director of program management, Jason Ronald. "And then in other cases, we may be able to do things at our level, on behalf of the title, similar to how we've done it in the past. These are all things that we're actively working through as we get closer to launch and we'll have more to share about specific enhancements in specific titles closer to launch."

  So, as we understand it, existing Xbox titles can be enhanced for both Series S and Series X in different ways - the compatibility team can step in with its own specific type of magic, opening the door to running 30fps games at 60fps and 60fps titles at 120fps. Alternatively, developers now have the tools to see where their existing Xbox One games are running - and if it's a Series S or Series X machine, aspects like doubling the frame-rate become possible (and perhaps other features could be enabled too) - all without having to 'port' their games to the next-gen platform. The extent to which take-up will be there is of crucial importance, of course, but the potential is certainly very exciting and we're really looking forward to testing this out on both of the new Xbox machines.

  Will you support the Digital Foundry team?

  Digital Foundry specialises in technical analysis of gaming hardware and software, using state-of-the-art capture systems and bespoke software to show you how well games and hardware run, visualising precisely what they're capable of. In order to show you what 4K gaming actually looks like we needed to build our own platform to supply high quality 4K video for offline viewing. So we did.

  Our videos are multi-gigabyte files and we've chosen a high quality provider to ensure fast downloads. However, that bandwidth isn't free and so we charge a small monthly subscription fee of £4.50. We think it's a small price to pay for unlimited access to top-tier quality encodes of our content. Thank you.

  Do Xbox 360 games work on Xbox Series S?

  If you previously bought a backward compatible game on Xbox 360 or have a game disc, you can play it on your Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S console. Only digital purchases will work on Xbox One S All Digital Edition and Xbox Series S. Additionally, some games or downloadable content may not be available in all regions.

  How do I put Xbox 360 games on Series S?

  You want to play your Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games on your brand new Xbox Series S..

  press the Xbox button on your controller..

  select My games and apps..

  choose Show all 4: select Complete library..

  Can I play my old Xbox games on Xbox Series S?

  We'll get this one out of the way first as it's the simpler answer - no! The key thing to know about the Xbox Series S before you buy it is that there's no physical disc drive whatsoever, which means that you'll have no way at all of running games from your discs on the new compact console.