Honestly, I don't care much about what's been revealed at E3 so far. However, one announcement resonated with me, for all the wrong reasons. Microsoft has declared that after four years and entirely too damn many Call of Duty games, backward compatibility for the Xbox One is over. Done. Kaput. Pushing up daisies, sleeping with the fishes, taking a dirt nap six feet under while biting the dust... feel free to choose your own crass death metaphor.
Yes, I understand that Microsoft's next game console will pick up where the Xbox One left off, and yes, I realize there are six hundred Xbox and Xbox 360 titles available. Nevertheless, there could have been more of them, and better choices. It got a little aggravating waiting week after week with an empty cup, waiting to be served something nourishing, only to end up with another bowl full of Hitman.
You wanna know how many Splinter Cell games were made backward compatible? Seven, counting four for the original Xbox. Guess how many Call of Duty games we got? Ten. How many Darkstalkers games did we get? Not Darksiders; Darkstalkers, the fighting game with monsters in it. That'd be zero. What about Mortal Kombat 9, the game that revived the series after several failed attempts by Midway to take it into the third dimension? Nope, didn't get that either.
Maybe I should be grateful for what we did get. King of Fighters XIII was released eventually, just a few months short of the cut-off point, and there were several other fighting games and retro compilations made available through the magic of backward compatibility. I'm relieved that Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, the first two Soul Caliburs, and Midway Arcade Origins squeezed through the gate before it slammed shut.
Nevertheless, I resent Microsoft's "slow drip" method of backward compatibility. How many games will be offered this week? Will there be anything you'd actually want to play? Will you get anything at all, or will Microsoft skip a week? It's better than having to shell out sixty dollars for a "remaster" of a game you already own, but it nevertheless feels manipulative. It's a carrot and stick situation, where you keep coming back week after week for the vague promise of a game you may never actually get to play on the latest hardware.
Backward compatibility wasn't always like this. In the 2000s, if you bought a next generation system, be it a Game Boy Advance or a Nintendo Wii or a Playstation 2, playing your old games was as simple as popping them into the new system. You didn't have to cross your fingers and hope that your favorite game would work someday... it just did, whether it was a mainstream title like Splinter Cell or something obscure, like Chibi-Robo or Intelligent Qube.
But hey, why give the consumer the power to make their own choices when you can string them along for a few years, using games they already own as bait? Now if you'll excuse me, I need to dust off my Xbox 360 so I can play some Mortal Kombat 9. It's obviously not going to happen any other way.
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