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.
while I'm here... I'm sure a lot of people are aware, but a big part of the reason so many STG devs prioritised X360 to begin with was due to the ranting of Ichiro Mihara, the notoriously outspoken VP of Arika—they were working on a series of Cave arcade ports for PS2 but were having trouble reproducing a certain section of the game Ketsui, so Mihara applied to release the game as an early PS3 title, only to be knocked back by Sony because they didn't want their new console represented by "cheap"-looking games, which had Mihara yelling fuck-PS3 at anyone who'd listen (and, evidently, many people were).
