Tip o' the Week 304 - Xbox One goes to 10

When the Xbox One console was released in November 2013, it marked a change in architecture compared to its wildly successful predecessor, moving away from a PowerPC processor and essentially a bespoke operating system, to instead using an AMD-powered but Intel-compatible architecture and the core elements of its operating environment running on a version of Windows 8. Although this was unnoticed by the majority of users – except that their old Xbox 360 games and peripherals didn’t work on the new console – it aimed to help developers build software to run on the console more easily.

Now, this week sees the general release of the “New Xbox One Experience” – aka NXOE – which delivers a load of new and changed functionality to the Xbox One, largely underpinned by a shift of the underlying OS to a version of Windows 10. This should mean that by the end of the year, you’ll be able to run the same OK – albeit different flavours – on your phone, tablet, laptop/desktop and home console/TV.

See more a few videos of NXOE, here.

The bignews for most Xbox fans, though, is that the NXOE also brings with it an ability to run selected Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One console – the intial list of 104 titles spans a variety of game genres with both Arcade games and full paid-for titles, with a promise of more to come in future.

So, if you didn’t pre-order COD: Black Ops III and therefore didn’t get the Nuketown bonus map, you might be able to play it on the original Black Ops, in a while.. Or you could do it for real…

Check your Xbox One this weekend – if you haven’t already taken part in the preview program – and you may be able to grab the update and start playing with the new console layout, and maybe dust down some of your old 360 games to see if you still have the magic, or you’ve lost it.