Mass Effect

With such a limited number of games currently available, it's not surprising that Mass Effect was selected for demonstration on-stage at the Microsoft conference this week. As the only Unreal Engine 3 title on the list we were eager to see how this popular tech operates within the virtual environment, especially bearing in mind its high CPU overhead in its early incarnations. It should be noted that as an early title on Xbox 360, Mass Effect suffers from rather egregious tearing, severe texture pop-in and serious frame-rate issues - all issues which were improved in subsequent games. The results on Xbox One are very interesting and a little unexpected.

As it stands, during both exploration and combat sequences, the game runs upwards of 30 per cent slower on Xbox One with a deviation ranging between 5-10fps at any random point. What was already a sluggish experience on original hardware becomes nearly unplayable at points on Xbox One. During an explosive encounter during the train sequence in the first mission, we encountered dips as low as 10fps. We suspect that forcing v-sync is to blame for the drop in performance, though CPU inefficiencies seen in many early Unreal Engine 3 titles may also be an issue. We'll be eager to see how the virtual machine evolves over the coming months and we can't wait until other Unreal Engine titles become available for testing, but for now, this is not the right way to experience the game.

Status: Sub-optimal and nearly unplayable in places.

N++

One of the older Xbox Live Arcade titles available on the service, N++ is basically a console conversion of a remarkable little Flash title from way back. It's still just as fun and fluid as ever, making it a nice addition to the current list. Surprisingly, it's also one of the titles with the most baffling performance issues. On Xbox 360, the game operates at a flawless 60fps - from the menu and throughout the game, it's always 60fps and it feels great. On Xbox One, this isn't the case. Throughout the experience we encountered a near constant stutter that has a tangible impact on gameplay. Strangely, this only has an impact on roughly half of the stages we tested in addition to the main menu - some levels actually run perfectly. The boosted contrast and added sharpening on Xbox One also become most evident in this game. Aside from that, the visuals are identical.

Status: Playable with performance issues.

Perfect Dark Zero

The infamous Perfect Dark Zero - a sequel that unfortunately failed to live up to the original - was the second Rare title released alongside the Xbox 360 launch hardware. To put it plainly, the game always had issues - a low frame-rate with lots of screen-tear, a low 1152x640 resolution with no anti-aliasing, along with a remarkably hideous art style. Despite this, as a title released in 2005, it offered a lot of impressive forward looking features including parallax occlusion maps, high quality object motion blur, and some impressive lighting effects (indeed, it was the earliest Xbox 360 title we're aware of that used deferred lighting). The good news is that the visuals are completely intact on Xbox One.

Similar to Mass Effect, the Xbox One forces v-sync, removing tearing in the process. Now, considering how severe this was on Xbox 360, this is a welcome change. Unfortunately, also in line with Mass Effect, this results in slower overall performance. The average difference this time sits between 4-6fps on average during taxing sequences, but the tearing was so annoying originally that the hit to frame-rate actually becomes worthwhile, with the game simply feeling more solid on Xbox One as a result. We can only hope that the emulation can be improved to enable smoother frame-rate with v-sync engaged as this feature could really transform quite a few titles on the platform.

Status: Lower performance, but a better experience than Xbox 360 overall.

Right now, as you might expect from early preview code, the virtual machine works and the fact that it does work is simply astonishing. However, as impressive as that is, there are a number of issues. Looking at Mass Effect in particular, we can't help but wonder whether the current CPU virtualisation is as fast as it should be. Clearly there is more work to do, but with a full release due later this year, the engineers still have plenty of time to polish things up. Even considering its current flaws, the state of the virtual machine's capabilities is remarkable: those precious few moments when performance actually exceeds the Xbox 360 gives us just a bit of hope that in the long run, we may actually end up with an improved experience in some games. While we don't know to what extent the current virtual machine can be improved, we'll keep an eye on the progress of this remarkable new feature and report back with our findings in the future.

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-vs-backwards-compatibility-on-xbox-one

Yes, truly a game changer.
As they start adding newer games (assuming they ever do) I expect them to play worse and worse.

MS got their headlines, someone might actually get tricked into believing them, but in the end BC will be another disappointment to most.

I think they shoiould have kept this feature for next Xbox.

Man, I was extremely excited about BC when they first announced this at E3, but with all these stories of the limited games that are even compatible, and now these performance issues, I'm not even sure if BC will be a great feature on XB1.

Yeah, the moment they announced it I was: "Dammit, should have not given away all those X360 games, or XOne would be a great purchase" But upon further inspection, not a single game of over 100 that I had works.

I will wait and see if it gets better.

But right now it looks like a marketing ploy.

"Buy an XB1 and you can play your old games with shanked performance"....

XB360 fans.... Keep your 360 for now.

Clearly rushed for E3 due to the lack of any real megaton

Mass effect is a very undemanding game compared to later gen games. I think that while developers obviously got a lot cleaner with their code they also pushed the 360 a lot harder and go way more juice out of it. So even if the engineers extract better performance out of the virtual machine it sounds like it is going to struggle with the best and brightest that 360 had to offer.

Kind of a shame but not completely unexpected. It will be interesting to see if improved engine work translates to more efficient play on the XO of if the intended architecture is just too different.

Personally, I think later games are going to be a lot better. More recent titles should handle multiple cores in a much improved fashion.

"Microsoft says it should have more than 100 games ready for the program when it launches for all this holiday season, and that all developers need to do is approve their games for the system to make them available -- no extra work should be required."

In the age of remasters and remakes (not complaining), I just don't see this taking off.

Good luck convincing rockstar approving BC for GTA for example.

This isn't true BC. Glad it exists but its significance is yet to be proved for me as a gamer.