Xbox Might Get More Backward Compatible Games After Activision-Blizzard Deal

With the Activision-Blizzard deal awaiting approvals from multiple competition regulators around the world, Xbox might get a few more Backwards Compatible games if the deal goes through.

The well-known Xbox insider Shpeshal_Nick recently appeared in the latest episode of the XboxEra podcast, talking about some good news for Xbox fans that could actually happen if the Activision-Blizzard deal final goes through.

According to the source, there are certain titles from previous generations published by Activision-Blizzard that cannot become available on Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S through the Backward Compatibility feature due to licensing problems.

The source believes that if Microsoft manages to successfully acquire Activision-Blizzard, these licensing barriers will be lifted, and Xbox fans can enjoy a few more classic games on their current-gen consoles, thanks to Backwards Compatibility.

Unfortunately, the leaker didn’t reveal anything about these titles, but he made it clear that we shouldn’t expect the Marvel-based games to appear in the Backward catalog as the licensing issues for those titles such as Spider-Man or X-Men are much more complicated.

Now, it remains unknown what games these could be, but some fans hope they could see the classic versions of Crash Bandicoot and Call of Duty in the Backwards catalog after the deal goes through.

Of course, we should first wait for approval from the competition regulators from around the world. Microsoft needs at least 20 approvals from competition regulators, of which it has received only 1 so far from Saudi Arabia.

Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed after the Activision-Blizzard acquisition that he would be looking forward to reviving some of the Activision-Blizzard IPs that have not received much love from the company in the last few years.

Activision-Blizzard has been mostly focused on its biggest IPs during the past 10 years, with most Activision studios helping out with the Call of Duty projects and only releasing a few remakes and remasters from Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. On the other hand, Blizzard put most of its efforts into Overwatch and Diablo franchises, forgetting some golden series such as StarCraft.

If we receive more information about the aforementioned rumor, we will update this article with new details.