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A week ago, we published our hands on testing with Microsoft's new backwards compatibility programme for original Xbox games on PC. The idea is sound, but that initial release did come with its share of bugs, including graphical artefacts in three of the four titles included and display scaling problems that capped maximum resolutions on some systems. Now these issues have been addressed in the program's first patch, though there are still some further improvements to be made.
First and most importantly, that display scaling bug - which saw Windows DPI settings above 100 percent removing the ability for games to reach their listed resolution targets - has been fully fixed. It's now possible to keep Windows scaling at your monitor's suggested scale (eg 150 percent for a 27-inch 4K monitor) and access that top-line 2560x1920 resolution, rather than being limited to 1440x1080.
Secondly, graphical issues have been eliminated - including the wireframes visible in some minigames in Fuzion Frenzy, shadow artefacts in Blinx: The Time Sweeper and missing character lighting in Conker: Live and Reloaded.
Microsoft told us that the Conker fix is split up into two parts, with one element going live now and another expected in another update later this year. Interestingly, the Blinx update removes MSAA from some GPUs in order to fix the issue, so we also anticipate that the feature will be restored once Microsoft and GPU vendors have worked together to solve the issue more permanently.
Unfortunately, the frame pacing issues don't appear to have been fixed. All of the 30fps titles exhibit uneven frame pacing, with a combination of 16.7ms, 33.3ms and 50ms frame times, which makes the game feel less smooth and responsive than it should. As a reminder, running the same games on Xbox Series X/S back-compat does provide a flat 33.3ms line, so there's still work to be done here.
Similarly, the judder we noticed in Conker: Live and Reloaded is also still unfortunately evident in the post-patch version. Hopefully, both of these issues can be fixed to ensure that the games feel as good as possible.
With the first significant patch in the bag, it's interesting to consider what other games are set to be included in the new original Xbox to PC pipeline. And indeed, what Xbox 360 titles could be added in the future, given that the emulator used here seems to be one with Xbox 360 roots.
What would you add next if you were in charge of this program at Xbox? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.