Red Dead Redemption jumped to Xbox One via backwards compatibility

Xbox One backwards compatibility was Microsoft’s slow-building promise: a growing library that let the previous generation’s best games live on the current one. And in February 2016, one of the greatest of them all leaked in ahead of its official announcement — Red Dead Redemption.

Before Microsoft said a word, the game surfaced as playable on Xbox One, alongside a batch of other classics: Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Halo Wars, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Left 4 Dead 2. The video below walks through how the listings appeared in the store and how to download them — at least in the US storefront at the time.

The timing was no accident. Everyone knew a Red Dead sequel was coming — the rumor mill had it landing that summer, quite possibly at E3. (The rumor was right: Red Dead Redemption 2 was unveiled at E3 2016 and shipped in 2018.)

Two years before the sequel made the original briefly hard to find, backwards compatibility had already done fans a favor: Red Dead Redemption playable on modern hardware, no old console required.