Microsoft added 21 original Xbox games to Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC on November 12, 2026, and only some of them were ever lost. Jason Ronald, VP of Next Generation, announced the batch on Xbox Wire. The program now holds 25 games, and it needs Windows 11. Microsoft gives no price per game. It says a purchase or a Game Pass subscription may be required, and that availability varies by market.
Part of this list never needed saving. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a PC game first, in 2002. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were PC shooters before they were Xbox ports. BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic reached Xbox on July 15, 2003, and Windows that November.
Free Radical Design’s TimeSplitters 2 came out in October 2002 on PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. It never had a PC version (two levels hidden in an arcade cabinet in Homefront: The Revolution do not count). Rare’s Grabbed by the Ghoulies was an Xbox exclusive in 2003 and has stayed on Microsoft consoles ever since, last seen in Rare Replay in 2015. Those two are the rescues, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect joins them.
Eleven Star Wars games, and ten that are not
Star Wars makes up 11 of the 21. There are both Star Wars Battlefront games and both Knights of the Old Republic games, plus Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy and Republic Commando. The flight games Jedi Starfighter and Starfighter Special Edition are in, along with The Clone Wars and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
The other ten start with Morrowind, both TimeSplitters games and Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Then come Red Faction II, Armed and Dangerous, Thrillville, Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb and Disney's Chicken Little.
Every game in the program now supports mouse and keyboard. Both Knights of the Old Republic games get achievements, and so do BLiNX: The Time Sweeper and Conker: Live and Reloaded. Those two came in the first batch of four. It launched on July 22 with Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge and Fuzion Frenzy, as Video Games Chronicle reported at the time. The achievements also work on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, and Microsoft says some may unlock from progress you already have.
"The games you've played are part of your history," Ronald writes. Fair enough (a lot of that history is Jedi). If you already own Knights of the Old Republic or Morrowind on PC, keep the version you have. This adds achievements to one and nothing you need to the other. TimeSplitters 2 is the reason to open the app. On PC it is now this version or nothing. On consoles, Xbox has run it through backward compatibility since 2021, and PlayStation got a PS2 Classic re-release in 2024.
My Xbox copy of Grabbed by the Ghoulies is still on the wall. It can stay there now.
