Back compat, a feature Xbox fans (like myself) often tout as a big and important feature of the Xbox One/Series X.
The program closed in November 2021 with 633/2,155 games from the Xbox 360 being playable on One/Series X, and a shockingly low 63/996 Original Xbox games playable.
Now a lot of the biggest games from the 360 are playable, but there is something pretty noticeable about what games are lacking.
Namely, the program almost entirely omitted Japan only releases.
Microsoft claimed the only games remaining had licensing issues, but all of CAVE, Triangle Service, Konami, Taito's shmups and more are still all digitally listed on the Japanese Xbox 360 store, and those companies all still own the rights to the listed games.
Out of the over 100 Japan only Xbox 360 releases, just 5 are on back compat.
That being:
- Clannad
- Cyber Troopers Virtual-On
- and the three Steins;Gate VNs
That is an exhaustive list.
And of the international releases for shmups, these are the only ones on back compat:
- Bullet Soul
- Bullet Soul: Infinite Burst
- Guwange
- Ikaruga
- Radiant Silvergun
- Raiden IV
- R-Type Dimensions
- Sine Mora
- Strania
- Triggerheart Exelica (Delisted recently)
Again, that is an exhaustive list
I can't think of a worse platform to play shmups on than the Xbox One/Series X, I genuinely think the Original Xbox might have gotten more important shmup releases than the Xbox One.
It's a sad situation all around, and with the Xbox 360 store closing in July, I don't think Microsoft are interested in finally bringing the Japanese exclusives over, what a shame...
the Bullet Soul localisations came out super late in the X360 lifecycle (2016!) and were produced specifically so that the publisher could get loophole them into being eligible for backwards-compatibility, but Cave had long disbanded their console division by that point so it was never an option for them (and several of their ports were programmed or otherwise tied up with external studios, which means they probably couldn't have localised them even if they wanted to).
before XB1 launched, MS Japan hyped it up as a continuation of the STG base they'd built with X360, but their promised games all fell flat: Raiden V showed up in a timely manner but was very quickly ported elsewhere, with their gimmicky cloud-powered gimmicks proven to be entirely replicable elsewhere (not that anyone even used 'em); Qute's Natsuki Chronicles was delayed for something like seven years and then immediately ported elsewhere, and Triangle Service's pledged Shooting Love release was never mentioned again beyond the initial announce.
aside from the XB1 being a complete non-starter in Japan, I'd wager that the surprise success of Crimzon Clover's Steam release probably saw XB deprioritised even further by JP STG devs, and then the Switch came along and somehow became a golden goose for old-school games and that was that.
I've had this feeling for years that a significant part of the Switch's success was simply good timing.
It came out at a time where a large amount of indie devs, and smaller publishers were frustrated with their games getting drowned on steam. Then comes along a machine that offers them a fresh start, nintendo seems willing to cooperate with porting their games over (I vaguely remember devs talking about how ninty handed out dev kits like candy on halloween), and it works for a lot of games.
I'm sure these days the switch digital store is having similar issues to steam that a lot of games are coming out, and discoverability has lowered significantly. But a lot of people have switches now (third best selling console of all time as of this writing I believe?), so if you can get the word out even a little bit, maybe you have a chance. Maybe you can get a spot on one of their indie showcases, or even sneak into a full direct.
So getting that early influx of smaller developers alongside bigger titles has to have helped sell more switches. Good timing. Good luck. Good marketing. Good enough hardware. And it snowballed from there.
And I REALLY hope whatever they follow it up with will be backwards compatible with the switch's sizeable library.. It makes sense to include that support. It would benefit everyone. And it's going to screw over a lot of the smaller devs they actively courted if it doesn't.
But... this is Nintendo we're talking about, and you can't always rely on what makes sense when it comes to their decisions.