Xbox has made some genius moves to get players into its gaming sphere as of late. Xbox Game Pass continues to be really good, and the surprise release of Halo Infinite's multiplayer has everyone talking and playing right where Microsoft wants.
On top of this, MIcrosoft recently celebrated the Xbox's 20th anniversary, and it celebrated it in a big way. In addition to adding FPS Boosts to a lot of old major titles, it also made 76 games from previous Xbox consoles backwards compatible with its current generation Xbox Series X/S and the Xbox One. This includes a lot of shooters, with two in particular bearing special mention.
Those two games are TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, the third game in the series. For those unaware, TimeSplitters was once a prominent first person shooter series in its own right. The addition of these two games is no doubt welcome news to anyone looking to dust off their copies and relive some old school time-travelling action. These games, along with the others announced to have backwards compatibility, may also help sooth the sting of six games leaving Xbox Game Pass recently.
The premise that the TimeSplitters games were built on were novel at the time and pretty solid: a shooter where players travel across different time periods making up the levels. The games are spiritual successors to classics like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, sharing development personnel and basic design philosophy. As such, it's hardly surprising that they were beloved by fans of those titles and helped carry their style of FPS gameplay into the original Xbox era, running alongside innovators like Halo to cement its place in the gaming scene. The news of backwards compatibility for the two sequels is the most welcome news for the series since the announcement of TimeSplitters 4.
While it is unlikely that this backwards compatibility will introduce too many new players to the games, there's a very good chance that it could ignite old fans' spark of love for the franchise. They may well want to check out the fan-made TimeSplitters title when it releases.
Still, games being playable on more platforms is only ever a good thing for players, and this is certainly the case here. No longer will players have to buy Homefront: The Revolution to play TimeSplitters 2, now they can simply buy TimeSplitters 2 itself, although they'll likely need a digital copy for the new consoles.