Claims to support "thousands" of games at launch.
Xbox Series X

Microsoft seems to be hedging its bets on its robust backwards compatibility when it comes to the Xbox Series X launch in November. Their announcement of a November release window for the Series X opened with the company talking up the "thousands of games" that fans will be able to play. These games are the ones that have come from the four generations of the Xbox brand that will be playable on the Series X this November.

Specifically, there will be over 100 optimized titles for the Xbox Series X. There will be "more than 50 new games planned for this year" that will be released across generations and optimized specifically for the Xbox Series X. These cross-generation titles include games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. With Smart Delivery, Microsoft says that you will only have to buy the games once to play it on the Xbox One or Xbox Series X.

There will also be entirely new games out that are developed for the Xbox Series X as well as available through Game Pass. These include games like The Medium, Scorn, and Tetris Effect: Connected. These will be in addition to "more than 40 popular games newly optimized to take full advantage of Xbox Series X." These games include Destiny 2, Forza Horizon 4, Madden NFL 21, and more.

Of these titles, one that will not be seen this Holiday season is Halo Infinite. It was just announced today that Halo Infinite has been delayed until 2021.

Microsoft also once again talked up Xbox Game Pass. However, the big addition to Game Pass will be their cloud based game streaming service. Starting September 15, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will be able to stream and play over 100 games from the cloud to their Android based phone or tablet. This mobile experience will be just like you are playing at home and include features like friends lists, achievements, save game progress, and more.

Play thousands of games across four generations of content
Playing your favorite games and franchises across four generations of Xbox was a key tenet for us in the next generation of console gaming. This commitment means that you will have access to thousands of titles across four generations of content – from Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Our back compat team continues to develop new innovations that can be applied to a curated list of titles that will enhance them even further than was possible when they were originally created. These optimizations include the ability to render titles with increased resolutions up to 4K, delivering new HDR reconstruction techniques to games that were developed years before HDR came into existence, applying anisotropic filtering to improve image quality, and creating ways to increase or double the frame rate of certain titles.