During Major Nelson's PAX AUS 2016 speech, he was asked about the future of Xbox One backwards compatibility. He talked about loving Red Dead Redemption being playable on the console and said that on November 12, a huge announcement would be coming regarding backwards compatibility. Phil Spencer recently stated on Twitter that they are looking to make this a "great BC month" by adding several top-level requests to the service. Backwards compatibility has been one of the Xbox One's best selling points over the past year as it allows owners migrating from the 360 to make a cleaner break - or perhaps to enjoy games for the first time.

Since the beginning of the service, fans have wanted many things - and they recently did get RDR. Players also wanted original Xbox playback, which would be huge - but one has to question the overall gain of that versus the manpower and money needed to get that rolling. Original Xbox games aren't being sold new, and very few are readily available on even the 360's storefront digitally. The current top vote-getters are a blend of likely and quite unlikely. Black Ops II, Modern Warfare 2, and Modern Warfare 3 are quite likely given that shooters have long tails to them and tend to be played for many years. The Mass Effect games have been highly-requested, but with remasters of the original trilogy being likely, they would seem to be a minor longshot. Arkham and Bioshock are a no-go with current-gen releases on them, while the Halos are already on the Xbox One via the Master Chief Collection. The same thing holds true for the Assassin's Creed games.

If I had to wager a guess, I'd go with the Call of Duty games being added to coincide with Infinite Warfare being released, and maybe a longshot of integration of Xbox 360 BC with the Windows 10 store at some point in 2017. While I would personally love original Xbox backwards compatibility more than that, it's very unlikely and the original Xbox audience is pretty niche at this point anyway. The 360 is far fresher in people's minds, with a more robust library of big-name games. The idea of playing Phantom Dust, Shenmue II, the Otogi games, Jet Set Radio Future, or Crazy Taxi 3 on the Xbox One is alluring though - but not something I would hold my breath for.