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...
It's a giant bummer across the board for sure. Say what you will about the actual long term fruits of Microsoft's labor trying to break into Japan (and they certainly made more mistakes than just hardware design flubs to make people here cool on them), the Japanese ecosystem for those first two Xbox systems is really unique and distinct and a legacy not without its lasting impact in certain spots. The Japanese-exclusive library for the original Xbox especially has a certain ambience to it that I would argue was never really seen before or since in this market because of the mixture of developers it did manage to attract, especially on the doujin-adjacent end of the spectrum. Profitable or not (and I would argue that at least a small handful of games would make money), it's a history worth properly maintaining, especially because the raw supply of both the consoles and especially the games here is only dwindling by the year. In a country with a less overall pronounced emulation/jailbreaking scene especially, for a lot of people, the Xbox Series consoles would be their best and only shot to viably experience a lot of these games, if only Microsoft and rights holders would go to the trouble to make it properly happen.
I've said this before on Twitter, but that you cannot go onto the Xbox store right now and buy an emulated copy of the original Idolmaster in particular absolutely boggles my mind. Here is a game that, by the numbers, practically has to be the most successful progeny of the Xbox's efforts in Japan by a wide, wide margin and is nowadays a tent pole franchise for Bandai Namco worth lord knows how much money between all of the music, merchandise, and gacha games in-between new console games, and you cannot buy that game if you own an Xbox Series console. The only guaranteed way to properly play it is to still have an original 360 and, these days, a physical copy of the game since it's no longer sold digitally as far as I'm aware. (Xenia has had extremely spotty compatibility with it and, again, is just the sort of thing most Japanese players aren't going to engage with for a whole host of reasons.) Even if the audience would be limited in practice, if still profitable, that just strikes me as a genuine waste, especially from a publisher that's all too happily to repackage and resell vast swaths of its history elsewhere, including within that very same generation!
And that's kind of how I feel about the situation with the lack of backwards compatibility for Japanese-exclusive Xbox and Xbox 360 games on the whole. Those libraries were always more than the dumb memes about those consoles' struggles would imply and deserve to remain accessible so that part of the story can continue to be properly told instead of swept under the rug as has been the case time and time again.