There’s been no shortage of rough news coming out of the gaming industry as of late.
The AI rush on RAM is sending hardware prices catapulting into the stratosphere, pushing products like the new and arguably underpowered Steam Machine over the $1,000 threshold. Also, to enthusiast dismay, PlayStation recently announced the end of physical media production for PS5, which is slated for a rapidly approaching 2028. The disruptive announcement resulted in a level of social media backlash I’ve rarely seen in the console space, and I lived through TV TV TV.
To top things off, Xbox laid off 1,600 employees several weeks ago amid its attempt to ‘reset’ the lagging brand, with another 1,600 lay-offs allegedly coming through the end of 2027’s fiscal year. Even storied and acclaimed Doom studio id Software was affected, which is insane, considering just how good The Dark Ages: Revelations is.
As bleak as 2026’s industry news has shown itself to be, it’s been comforting (in a sort of cognitively dissonant way) to confront another, yet infinitely more hopeful, truth: From the standpoint of general fun and entertainment and creativity, I’m not sure there’s been a better time to be a gamer. The number of great titles releasing every week, from stuff like the amazing indie Denshattack! to the AAA Saros, is staggering—an absolute glut of excellent software to enjoy. And now we add some retro goodness to the mix, as if we have time to play old games, as well.
Xbox, despite its increasingly haggard reputation, has announced backwards compatibility for PC. They’re rolling out the program with four classic Xbox titles: Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Fuzion Frenzy, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Conker: Live and Reloaded. If you have a Game Pass subscription, you have access to all of these titles now, or if you already bought them on console. They’re also available to purchase separately.
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Each of these gems are very much worth revisiting, by the way, except maybe Fusion Frenzy, which remains interesting to me in only an historical, museum-artifact kind of way. Still, it’s cool, nonetheless. Blinx is a breezy, time manipulation 3D platformer and was Xbox’s original attempt at a cute mascot, and this was long before Voodoo Vince. Oddly, I’ve written making-of features for both games: Here’s Blinx and here is Vince.
Crimson Skies is a first-party aerial dog-fighting experience and remains a total blast. It’s a bummer the multiplayer servers are long gone, but the single player campaign is still worth a play. Conker: Live and Reloaded is a solid remake of Rare’s raunchy 2001 N64 platformer, and while the Ren & Stimpy humor hasn’t aged all that well, I’d recommend giving it a shot.
It’s important to note that these aren’t just straight ports, however. On PC, you can now customize upscaling and resolution (four different options, up to 2560×1920). toggle VSync, adjust full-screen and windowed options, plus anti-aliasing and filtering. Best of all, there are achievements coming at some point, although the classic Xbox games aren’t presently launching with them, unfortunately.
Obviously, in terms of consumer goodwill, this is a drop in the bucket for Xbox, but at least they’re making an effort in the direction of games preservation. It’s an especially big deal in light of PlayStation’s recent physical media news, and I really hope PlayStation takes note of what Microsoft is doing here. There are tons of classic PS1, PS2 and PS3 games locked on Sony’s consoles, physically and digitally, if you don’t count emulation. Why not officially bring them over to PC via an app? If we can’t have the discs anymore, can we at least have a consistent catalog across hardware? I’m sure the demand isn’t all that high, though.
In the all-digital future we’re barreling toward, it would go such a long way if all of these gaming companies, from PlayStation to Nintendo to Xbox, started thoroughly archiving their retro catalogs and making them available to the masses. Can you imagine what that would do for public sentiment, especially at the current moment? I know we’re got services like NSO and PS Plus already, which offer select old games from platforms like SNES and Game Boy and PS1, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Honestly, we want full preservation of these gaming histories, and we want to be able to play these works of art in perpetuity, without being tied to failing, dusty hardware.
Hopefully Xbox is onto something here with its PC backward compatibility program. If they made the effort to, one by one, digitize every original Xbox title (and 360 too, for that matter) for play on not only PC but also the upcoming Project Helix, they might have a leg-up on PlayStation in the next console war. Not likely or entirely feasible, I know, but a man can dream.
