You don’t have to buy the BioShock games again to play them on your Xbox One — although you can if you want.
The Xbox 360 versions of all three BioShock games are now backward compatible on the Xbox One. This means that if you own the physical discs or the digital versions from the Xbox Game Store, you can play them on your Xbox One today without having to make any additional purchases. This is a rather decent action for the publisher, which could have blocked Microsoft from making the games compatible in favor of selling more copies of the remastered Xbox One and PlayStation 4 compilation BioShock: The Collection.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":2130725,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']For Microsoft, this is another important batch of Xbox 360 games that now function on the Xbox One. The company has spent the last several years expanding this feature with support for beloved games like Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Mass Effect 2. The publisher has even begun working with third parties to provide new retail packaging that indicates certain games work on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
BioShock, BioShock 2 & BioShock Infinite are coming to Xbox One Back Compat today making it 300+ back compat titles https://t.co/qPMRNrLoTQ pic.twitter.com/2uoNtXrSoT
— Larry Hryb, Gamer Emeritus ?⌨️?️? (@majornelson) December 13, 2016
The addition of BioShock to the backward-compatible roster is also yet another weapon that Microsoft can use in its battle to win over consumers. PlayStation 4 does not have this functionality. To play the BioShock games on that system, you would need The Collection or a subscription to the PlayStation Now cloud-streaming service that costs $20 per month.
If BioShock is someone’s favorite Xbox 360 game, and they already own it for that system. Now, when they go to upgrade to a PS4 or Xbox One, that person may end up going with Microsoft since much of their Xbox 360 game library will carry over.