Twenty-five years ago this Sunday, Microsoft shoved a big black box with a glowing green jewel into a living-room market owned by the PlayStation 2. I was firmly a PS2 kid back then, but even I remember friends lugging that thing to sleepovers for Halo LAN nights. So it’s a little poetic that, for the anniversary, Microsoft’s most interesting move isn’t a console at all. It’s putting those original Xbox games on Windows PCs.
At the final stop of its eight-city FanFest tour in Seattle on Nov. 12, Xbox added 21 more original Xbox games to its Backward Compatibility on PC program, taking the library from four titles to 25. The number is a deliberate nod to the birthday. Four of those games also get something they never had in 2001 through 2005: achievements.
That’s the headline for me, but it wasn’t the only news. The same night, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed Wolfenstein 3 is officially in production at MachineGames, id Software said its next game is underway, and Halo: Campaign Evolved got a free Firefight mode on the calendar. Let’s go through what’s real, what’s useful, and where the catch is.
What’s actually in the 25-game lineup
The program launched over the summer with a tiny starter set: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Fuzion Frenzy. The new batch is far deeper. Highlights include Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel The Sith Lords, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Red Faction II, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, Armed and Dangerous, Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Secret Weapons Over Normandy.
Then there’s the Star Wars wall. Of the 21 new additions, 11 are Star Wars games, from both KOTORs to Battlefront and Battlefront II (the original Pandemic versions), Republic Commando, Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Jedi Starfighter, Starfighter: Special Edition, The Clone Wars and the Revenge of the Sith tie-in. Rounding out the list are Disney’s Chicken Little and Thrillville, which are exactly the kind of licensed oddities that tend to vanish from storefronts forever, so I’m genuinely glad to see them preserved somewhere.
According to Xbox VP Jason Ronald’s post, every game in the program now supports mouse and keyboard, and the original four picked up performance and stability fixes. The games also run on Windows handhelds, with Microsoft specifically calling out the ROG Xbox Ally family. Xbox says more original Xbox games are coming to PC over time.
The achievements part is a bigger deal than it sounds. For the first time ever, KOTOR, KOTOR II, BLiNX and Conker: Live and Reloaded have unlockable achievements, and they work on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles too after the latest system update. Microsoft says it designed them with each game’s developer and publisher, and that in some cases they can pop retroactively based on progress you’ve already made. Achievement hunters have been asking for OG Xbox support since the Xbox One backward-compatibility days, so this one lands.
The fine print you should know before you buy
Here’s where I have to be the realistic friend. This is not a free throwback pack. You need Windows 11, it’s only available in select markets, and you need to own each game digitally or have it through Game Pass. Among the new 21, Microsoft lists only Morrowind and Grabbed by the Ghoulies as Game Pass titles, so most of this lineup is a purchase. And as The Verge points out, the original discs sitting in your closet won’t help, because original Xbox and Xbox 360 discs aren’t part of the disc-to-digital setup. The Verge also notes the feature appears to be emulator-driven.
There’s also a fair criticism about the selection. Most of those Star Wars games, KOTOR included, already have PC versions you can buy on other storefronts, and some of them have been modernized by fan patches for years. The truly Xbox-specific stuff, like Conker: Live and Reloaded, BLiNX and Crimson Skies, is still the smaller slice. If you were hoping for a deep dive into the forgotten corners of the 2001 library, this isn’t quite that yet.
And the timing delivered an unplanned reminder about digital-only libraries. On Nov. 13, Windows Central reported that Microsoft’s broader service outage was hitting Xbox, with players saying sign-ins, cloud saves, cloud gaming and some digital game launches were failing. Preservation through a storefront is still a lot better than nothing, but it’s only as solid as the account servers behind it.
The rest of the FanFest haul was mostly about the future. The big one is Wolfenstein 3. Sharma confirmed it’s in production at MachineGames, saying in the official Xbox Wire recap, “This is a franchise with an important place in gaming history, and I’m excited to see the team continue its story.” Brian Bloom and Debra Wilson return as BJ Blazkowicz and Grace Walker. There’s no trailer, platform list or date yet, just a script tease and a mocap photo, but after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus in 2017, a proper sequel has been a long time coming.
id Software also confirmed its next project is in development, while DOOM: The Dark Ages gets its Slaughter Mode on Nov. 16 at no extra cost for owners of the Revelations DLC, the Premium Edition or the Premium Upgrade. Expect waves of randomized enemies, bosses and arenas with stacking rewards. That’s welcome, though it’s worth remembering id was hit by Xbox’s recent layoffs, as Wccftech noted in its FanFest roundup.
Halo fans get Firefight, the four-player co-op wave-survival mode, added to Halo: Campaign Evolved as a free winter update with new maps. There’s no date yet; Halo Studios says more details are coming at Halo Fest in Seattle on Dec. 12 and 13. Kotaku reports it’s likely the last Halo content from what remains of Halo Studios as the series moves to Activision, which makes it feel a bit bittersweet.
Round that out with new quest gameplay from Fable, which is still slated for Feb. 23, 2027 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, plus the new Xbox Playback recap feature, anniversary cosmetics in Forza Horizon 6, Minecraft, Gears of War: E-Day, Flight Simulator 2024 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and new Home and library personalization options for Xbox Insiders.
Cody’s take
I like this direction a lot, with honest reservations. Bringing OG Xbox games to the PC and handheld crowd, adding mouse and keyboard, and finally giving KOTOR achievements is real preservation work, not just a nostalgia trailer. Twenty-five games in roughly four months is solid progress from a four-game start.
But it’s still a paid, account-bound, Windows 11-only program, the lineup leans hard on Star Wars games that were already easy to get on PC, and your old discs are out of luck. If Microsoft keeps the pace up and starts digging into the true exclusives that never left the original console, this could become one of the best things Xbox does for its own history. For now, if you’ve never played KOTOR or TimeSplitters 2, this is a pretty great excuse. I’d just check the Game Pass list before paying for anything.
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