The Xbox One just got the largest game library of any platform

Remember the Xbox 360? Maybe you're still using one! It's arguably the best game console ever made, and almost certainly the best game console that Microsoft's ever made. The Xbox 360 dominated sales and endeared game fans the world over in the last generation of game consoles, easily convincing consumers to "Jump In" to Xbox 360 over Sony's PlayStation 3.

Microsoft announced on Monday morning that the entire Xbox 360 game library is getting support on Xbox One. Put more simply: your old Xbox 360 games are about to start running on your Xbox One. That's a lot of games!

So many games, in fact, that it puts the Xbox One game library in the top position against the likes of Sony's PlayStation 4 (in terms of sheer numbers, anyway). It means games like "Mass Effect" and "Red Dead Redemption" are going to be available on the Xbox One, and that's truly exciting. 

It's part of Microsoft's ongoing initiative to make all your games available wherever you want to play them. Should you wish to play your Xbox 360 games on a Windows 10 computer, for instance, that's now possible too - like Xbox One games, your 360 library will be available to stream to your Windows 10-powered PC through the Xbox One.

Is the process a bit convoluted? Perhaps, but it's a lot better than the solution Sony's offering: no backwards compatability whatsoever. If you've got a large PlayStation 3 library that you want to bring over to the PlayStation 4, you're skunked.

And since the Xbox One is running a software-based version of your old game console, all the other bells and whistles will still work: stuff like online multiplayer, or downloadable content, and whatever else. All of that stuff should still work, despite the fact that you're on a totally different game console. Not bad!

There are, of course, some limitations. Microsoft is still in the approval process for a lot of games; the company has to ask game publishers if it's okay to make their games available. And the program isn't available just yet on every Xbox One: if you're part of the console's "Preview Program," you can try out a short list of supported titles starting today. For the rest of us, Microsoft's promising support for "over 100 titles" by this fall; "hundreds more" are promised to be added each month. 

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