Microsoft Store records point to a huge second wave of Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC, days before Xbox turns 25. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and Grabbed by the Ghoulies would be on PC for the first time ever.
Update Nov 12, 4:15 PM ET: It’s official, and it’s bigger. Xbox confirmed on Xbox Wire that 21 more original Xbox games are live on PC today, taking Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC to 25 games, including KOTOR I and II, Morrowind, TimeSplitters 2 and Future Perfect and 11 Star Wars games. KOTOR I and II, BLiNX and Conker also get achievements for the first time. Full story here.
Original article
The next wave of original Xbox games on PC may already be sitting in Microsoft’s back end, and it’s a big one. A Reddit user named esketitethan has shared Microsoft Store records for 16 original Xbox games with Windows package entries that look just like the ones behind the four Xbox classics Microsoft brought to PC in July. The post went up in the GamingLeaksAndRumours community on November 11, as reported by Sutato, VGTimes and GAMINGbible.
Microsoft hasn’t announced any of these. Back-end entries are a strong hint, not a release date. But the timing is hard to ignore: the original Xbox turns 25 on Sunday, November 15, and Xbox has spent all week celebrating its history.
What’s on the list
Half of the list is Star Wars, and the other half is a time capsule of the early 2000s:
- Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II
- Star Wars Republic Commando
- Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
- Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars
- Star Wars Jedi Starfighter
- Star Wars Starfighter Special Edition
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
- Grabbed by the Ghoulies
- Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb
- Red Faction II
- Secret Weapons Over Normandy
- Thrillville
- Disney’s Chicken Little: Ace in Action
The headliners are TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and Grabbed by the Ghoulies, because neither has ever been released on PC. VGTimes points out that the TimeSplitters entry carries a package family name starting with “Xbox360BackwardCompatibil,” the kind of identifier tied to Microsoft’s backward compatibility setup. Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a Rare game, so it fits right next to Conker in the first batch.
Some of these, like Morrowind, Battlefront and Republic Commando, already had their own PC versions back in the day. That’s not a reason to shrug. Per Sutato, these would be the original Xbox versions running through Microsoft’s backward compatibility layer, not new ports, which means a Microsoft-supported way to play them on a modern Windows 11 machine instead of wrestling with old discs and fan patches.
How the first wave worked
If this lines up with what Xbox already did, we know exactly what to expect. On July 22, Xbox VP of Next Generation Jason Ronald announced Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC in early release with four original Xbox games: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Fuzion Frenzy. Ronald called it “the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time.”
Those four were sold on PC and included with all Xbox Game Pass plans at launch, and if you already owned one digitally on console, that license carried over to your PC or handheld, including the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X. They play through the Xbox on PC app on Windows 11 with up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync, fullscreen and windowed modes, anisotropic filtering and enhanced anti-aliasing. The bar to get in is low: Microsoft’s minimum spec is a GTX 950, RX 550 or Arc A310 with 8 GB of RAM.
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That license carryover is the part that matters most if this second wave is real. Under the July rules, a digital copy you already own on console comes with you to PC. If these 16 follow the same path, a game you bought years ago on Xbox could simply show up in your PC library.
Why this is the right move
This is Xbox doing what no other console maker does: treating your old library like it still belongs to you. Sixteen games at once would be four times the size of the opening batch, and a wave this heavy on Star Wars and Rare points to Microsoft clearing real licensing work, not just flipping a switch.
It also makes the PC side of Xbox look smarter by the month. A Windows handheld that plays Game Pass, your Xbox Play Anywhere library and now original Xbox classics is a pitch nobody else can match. If this drops for the anniversary, it’s a perfect birthday present. If it lands later, the records still only suggest Microsoft is lining this up. We’ll update this story the moment Xbox confirms it.
Image: Microsoft
