What Xbox Smart Delivery Means For Next-Generation Gaming

By Mik Furie / February 25, 2020

One of the chief selling points of the Xbox Series X is its ability to play four generations of Xbox games on one system.

Previously a launch feature of older console generations, backwards compatibility was notably missing from the Xbox One when it released. It was no longer cost effective to include the last generation's chipset in the new consoles and, with gamers happy to pay for slightly sharper HD versions of the titles they already owned, including it would only have cost money to lose the company even more money.

However, with the Xbox One originally launched as a stealth gateway to Microsoft's long-term goal of taking over the living room, fans had flocked to their competitors in droves. Trailing far behind Sony, Microsoft introduced emulation-based backwards compatibility and slowly added hundreds of games from the previous two generations to the feature.

In huge news for the Xbox Series X, we found out that any game that worked on the Xbox One - including those that worked via backwards compatibility - will work on Xbox Series X, too.

And now, Microsoft has announced another feature in a blog filled with information: forwards compatibility.

Called Smart Delivery, this is more a pledge from Microsoft than a specific hardware or software feature.

Rather than allowing dozens of rereleases with slightly sharper graphics as happened at the start of this generation, Microsoft has promised that this won't happen with titles from their first-party development studios. Instead, if a player owns the Xbox One version of a game, and that game ever receives an upgraded version for Xbox Series X, then the player will get that upgraded version for free.

The reveal that backwards compatibility was extending to Series X meant that Xbox One owners had already been building their Series X library of games. What Smart Delivery adds to this is the promise that the player will always have access to the best version of the game, and at no additional cost.

Microsoft is obviously betting on themselves here, reasoning that the sales they lose from upgraded versions of games will be less than if early adopters wait on purchasing games until they can get the next generation versions.

While Smart Delivery will be a feature of every title from Microsoft's own studios, they can't enforce cross-generational purchases on other publishers.

There are those who would likely be unhappy that they lose the ability to gain a few extra sales of an already released game, and that could become a reason to stay away from Xbox for some. Of course that bounces back to Microsoft, as it only drives players to their competitors again.

Instead, what Microsoft have done is something similar to their backwards compatibility initiative, opening the feature up to other developers on a voluntary, game-by-game basis. These third-party developers and publishers can "choose to use [Smart Delivery] for titles that will be on Xbox One first and come to the Xbox Series X later."

Wasting little time, developers of the popular The Witcher series, CD Projekt Red were the first of these third parties to sign up to the initiative, with a tweet that announced their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game will not only be coming to Series X, but it will be a Smart Delivery title.

With more developers sure to come, and cross-generational titles always a large part of the move to the next generation, Smart Delivery could very well deliver exactly what gamers have been looking for.