It’s awesome that Microsoft added backwards compatibility for (some) Xbox 360 games to Xbox One, but it’s hardly a perfect situation. One of most demanded games for compatibility, Halo: Reach, comes with a crappy frame rate.
With the end of the year upon us, I haven’t had much time to spend with older games. I’m still trying to find time to finish up the new games.
That said, it’s not shocking Halo 5 has prompted lots of fans to dig into the game’s history. Thus, a recent thread on an Xbox One subreddit caught my eye: Halo Reach on Xbox One is pretty much unplayable. That’s a pretty bold claim!
They’re not alone! Lots of people seem to be having issues with the game.
I asked Kotaku‘s Kirk Hamilton to load the game up earlier today, and he confirmed it “runs pretty damn crusty”.
This video helps show what’s going on between the different versions.
Some have claimed the game dips into the teens, and while these videos don’t provide evidence for drops that bad, it’s clear the Xbox One version is worse. Most of the time, the Xbox 360 version holds steady at 30-frames-per-second.
Another video has a player explaining the biggest issue: the troubled frame rate means it’s harder to play the game.
So far, Microsoft hasn’t responded to my request for comment. Emulation can improve over time, though, so it’s possible Microsoft could smooth this out.
Others have mentioned problems with Gears of War 3, as well, but we weren’t able to personally test that out.
Have you noticed other issues with backwards compatibility? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
26 responses to “Halo: Reach Doesn’t Run Very Well On Xbox One”
Man, I can’t believe 343 even fucked this up.
Makes me constantly wonder how they fuck they got selected to do these games??? They seem barely competent.
I wouldn’t say that Halo 5 is “barely competent”. The pvp is excellent and the campaign is at least avg. Sure, they muffed up really bad with the MCC by getting different companies to do the different games inside of the collection and failed to give themselves the time (MS year 1 X1 desperation) to actually bring it all together properly and then failed harder by not testing multiplayer connectivity outside of their closed freaking network… but Halo 5 was fine, even better than fine.
Eh, I still would disagree about Halo 5. I played it and it doesn’t feel special anymore. It’s just another by the numbers FPS game.
With a worse than CoD soapie story.
It may be ‘better than fine’, but it doesn’t reach those heights of ‘special’ that it needs to. At best it’s ‘not too bad’. Halo Reach was exceptionally good, had heart and soul imbued into it. There’s something utterly clinical about 343’s.
Before 343 Halo was *the* game to play. It was the game everybody could get into. Even people who hated it could find something to enjoy about it.
Now Halo is just another face on the shelf. The kind of game you shuffle past when discussing with your friend what you want to play, before just reverting back to Call of Duty.
Nailed it.
Except I haven’t played a CoD since MW1. But I get what you’re saying, even if I don’t agree.
Just thinking now that maybe it’s because I haven’t played CoD in years that I’m not as disappointed in H5 as most previous Halo fans seem to be. I still play Titanfall every now and again and gave Evolve a shot and really enjoyed them both, although lost intrest in Evolve quickly as I didn’t have more than 1 friend playing it and that’s something I felt you really need in Evolve.
I dunno, now I’m rambling. It sucks that lots of Halo fans were disappointed, I still have a good time jumping into BTB and Warzone for a couple of hours. Don’t do very well, but still have a good time.
I’d argue that by the end of Bungies tenure Halo was rapidly ceasing to be ‘the’ game to play.
Call of Duty had come along by then (Reach was 2010, as was Black Ops) and was rapidly eating its lunch. By the time Reach came out we’d had Modern Warfare 1 & 2.
Halo 3 was the last time it was ‘the’ game to play, and even that released against Modern Warfare 1.
I think the point I’m trying to make is that 343 aren’t responsible for the decline of Halo, they just happened to be adjacent to the time Call of Duty got big.
It’s easiest to notice in the forerunner weapon design, where you just get the forerunner assault rifle, with the forerunner smg, forerunner battle rifle and forerunner shotgun….
Sure there are likely some slight variances that might make a difference at high level multi but especially in single player they just don’t feel different. Where as in 1 and 2 pretty much every weapon felt unique.
Honestly I can’t even remember the plot of 4 either….
4 was a soapie plot, just like 5. Big on emotion and shocks and twists, low on actual good story.
And sadly I’d have to put the new Star Wars movie in the same camp – nice action, nice graphic, rubbish rehashed old plot.
Hate to break up the 343 hate train (choo choo) but the developers don’t have much to with the emulation process beyond giving Microsoft the go ahead.
edit: In fact since 343 didn’t develop Reach, I’m not sure why you’re suggesting they had anything to do with the process at all. 343 doesn’t have anything to do with the Xbox team besides being owned by Microsoft.
Unless that was a joke, in which case carry on, nothing to see here…
In its defense, I often got Halo 1 down to 1 FPS in certain situations on the original xbox.
Low FPS is hereditary i guess
Uh, yeah. If you keep smacking the same corpse 50 times in a row you add 50 layers of blood textures to the same spot, which would really lower the framerate.
On the original Xbox *sure*. But you’re using superior hardware on an older game.
huh? are you not using superior hardware with a superior software engine?
stepping?
In this case, not really. Most of the coding is held over from the original game. This is emulation after all, not an actual redo of the game in a brand new engine.
This kind of issue pops up when there’s a problem with interpretation. In layman’s terms, the framerate dips as the machine struggles to read the instructions right. This is my key suspect given it’s not just Reach having problems.
Now… There’s a slight flaw in any excuse one could give for this. Because the 360 is still in production. By the same company. The hardware and architecture of both are known to you, so writing an interpreter should be rather easy.
It’s ‘backward compatibility’ without the s, and not ‘backwards compatibility’.
http://www.xbox.com/en-AU/xbox-one/backward-compatibility
Well with this one it is definitely backwards, especially playing online and it drops so bad.
<3 potatos
Yeah, I’m gonna go just Play Halo Reach on my PC.
Oh wait…
Just do a MCC (without the stuff ups) and remaster Reach for the Xbox One.
Halo… I miss the real good old halo, it’s gameplay formula was the best. But now 343 turned it into another generic soulless shooter, so sad 🙁
To be fair, initially Mass Effect ran like dog shit in backward compatibility mode… but they patched it, and have continued to do so.
They’ve patched Reach at least once so far… and I doubt they’ll stop with that.