Neither the Xbox One nor the PS4 feature backwards compatibility for content made for the Xbox 360 or PS3. Sony has said it plans to make use of its Gaikai purchase for cloud-based emulation of PS1, PS2, and PS3, while Microsoft has also talked about backwards compatibility via the cloud. This past week at BUILD in San Francisco, Microsoft talked just a tiny bit more about its plans for backwards compatibility with the Xbox One.
Microsoft's Frank Savage told attendees at one BUILD session that the company is still working on backwards compatibility via an emulator. Savage highlighted difficulties with PowerPC and X86 in his response to a question about Xbox 360 emulators.
Read more: Xbox One Review: Unifying Your Living Room Experience
"Are there plans for an Xbox 360 emulator on Xbox One?" Kotaku cites an audience member as asking. "There are, but we're not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately," Savage replied. "It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there's nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself."
Savage offered no other details aside from the comments above, but it's clear the company hasn't quite figured out how to tackle backwards compatibility. Microsoft talked about backwards compatibility via the cloud around the time of the Xbox One launch last fall; that solution is not without its difficulties either. Speaking to IGN, Albert Penello said that controlling the quality was one of the biggest issues and that they were keen to see how Sony handles that issue.
"So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy," Penello said. "Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can't control the quality of that experience and make sure it's good, or have to tell people they can't do it?" he continued, later adding that Microsoft has done a lot of work on it but that the network just needs to get improved before Microsoft can execute.
Follow Jane McEntegart @JaneMcEntegart. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.