Say what you will about The Master Chief Collection working, there is little denying its far reaching scope. The package was stocked with content and set a bar for what expectations re-masters/collections should have. When the news that a Gears of War remake was in the works, excitement quickly followed. Speculation erupted that we were in line to get a Marcus Fenix Collection that would feature the three primary Gears games, along with all the competitive and cooperative bells and whistles those games featured. But that isn’t what was revealed.
Gears of War Ultimate Edition is an anniversary edition of the original game, and just the original game. One campaign, one game’s worth of multiplayer maps, no four player co-op, no Horde or Beast modes. Instantly this went from a must buy for many gamers to just another remake, in a console cycle filled with them. Even for myself, a pretty big Gears fan that plans on getting it, it was a bit of a letdown.
Then this week, Microsoft added a little value to the purchase of the Gears of War Ultimate Edition. If you buy and play a copy of Gears of War Ultimate Edition between its launch and the end of 2015, you’ll also receive the entire series run on Xbox 360 digitally, playable on Xbox One via its new backwards compatibility feature. While this is certainly not comparable to what the Master Chief Collection did, being able to play all the old Gears games on Xbox One is a great selling point for this remaster.
But this isn’t just a great selling point for the remaster, it is a great selling point for the Xbox One. The reality is that people like to get free stuff and being able to bundle new games, on their new system with past games, from their past system, gives an easy opportunity to one-up the competition when it comes to reasons to buy on Xbox.
Bethesda announced that if you buy Fallout 4 on the Xbox One, you’ll get a copy of Fallout 3 as well. Likewise Square Enix announced that if you purchase Just Cause 3 on Xbox One, you’ll get a copy of Just Cause 2. And you can be sure that when Creative Assembly’s newly announced Halo Wars 2 releases next year, it will be coming with a copy of the original Halo Wars. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if 343 announced that anyone who purchases Halo 5 will get Halo: Reach as well.
And to top it all off, if you are an Xbox Live Gold member, going forward, every 360 Games with Gold title will be backwards compatible on the Xbox One. So Xbox One owners will get 4 new games a month, instead of just the two we’ve been getting.
I was already excited for backwards compatibility on the Xbox One. Being able to utilize the Xbox One’s capabilities to grab screen grabs, clips, and easily broadcast via Twitch for Xbox 360 games I own is fantastic. But all of this potential for added value has me even more excited. And if I, a self admitted grouch, am excited, then you know somebody is doing something right. It’s a really good time to be an Xbox owner.
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