Xbox One vs. Xbox 360: Which Gen's Games Stack Up Better?

The launch of a new generation of consoles always feels like a monumental event. The Xbox One is releasing this month, and sure enough our panties are twisted tightly in a bunch, and they won't unravel until the console is in our living rooms.

But we remember feeling exactly the same when the Xbox 360 launched all those years ago. Back then the launch games were miles ahead of what we were playing on the original Xbox, and getting the new console was a no-brainer.

These days, though, the technology gap is so small that it's getting harder to spot the differences between older and next-gen titles. Many upcoming games will launch simultaneously for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. In some, the differences will be like night and day; others will be more difficult to differentiate.

At a recent Xbox One showcase event in San Francisco we sat down with the developers of several games that are launching on both Xbox One and Xbox 360 to ask them exactly how they're taking advantage of Microsoft's new hardware. Some of their answers might surprise you.

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Call of Duty is a tentpole franchise, so Infinity Ward, Activision and Microsoft couldn't let it launch on just one generation of consoles. But it's one title that will be virtually identical on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

"It was important to us that the gameplay experience was the same across all platforms," Infinity Ward's senior community manager, Tina Palacios, told us. "The biggest difference is going to be an aesthetic one." The graphics are better, and on Xbox One they're even using a technique that Pixar uses that makes textures look better the closer you get to them.

But there's one other main difference: in Call of Duty: Ghosts' campaign on Xbox One players can use Kinect to bark voice commands to the dog, Riley, who will then carry out their orders.

For Just Dance 2014, on the other hand, Ubisoft Associate Director of PR Michael Beadle said there are major differences between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One versions.

The Xbox One's Kinect sensor allows the game to be more precise in its scoring, since it can more accurately detect players' movements, Beadle explained. The new Kinect also allows players to be closer and can detect players in a wider area, which is nice for people with small or unusual living rooms. And using Xbox Smartglass friends who aren't dancing can set up a queue of songs, or use "puppet master" mode to pick dance moves for the dancing players to have to do.

There's one big new feature that players will notice when they invite some friends over, though. "For the first time, and exclusively on Xbox One, we're able to have six players play simultaneously and be scored," Beadle explained. "People love playing this in groups, whether it's a bunch of 12, 13 year old girls, or whether it's a fraternity, or whether it's a bunch of folks playing at Thanksgiving, for example. Groups of people want to play, and the more that can play and be scored, the better."

The new Skylanders game is another one that will be nearly identical on both generations' hardware. Besides minor graphical improvements thanks a to new graphics engine, there will be no other differences between the Xbox One and Xbox 360 versions. And that's a good thing, Skylanders Production Coordinator Lou Studdert told us.

"What's really cool about the Xbox One version of the game and really just about the next generation as a whole is that we're not at a start-fresh stopgap here," he said. "Because our toys are free of platform restrictions, families can embrace this next generation without losing anything."

Swap Force, like all Xbox One games, will feature game DVR functions, but that's more of a system feature than a game feature, as Studdert pointed out.

Peggle 2 is currently only announced for Xbox One, but if PopCap holds true to its normal model then it will eventually be released on every platform known to man. So what is there in the Xbox One version to recommend it over other versions, when they eventually launch?

"We're focusing on [the Xbox One] version right now. All our efforts are on this one. In the future, you could imagine that the first one to come out on will have newer stuff first, but we haven't really set a time for anything else," PopCap's Sylvain Dubrofsky told us. He emphasized that any discussion of other versions is purely hypothetical right now. Wink.

Peggle 2 will take full advantage of the Xbox One's game DVR functionality, though.

"If you look on YouTube, people share their Peggle stuff like crazy," Dubrofsky said. "We're constantly watching what you do, and we're like judging oh that's a really good shot, we're going to automatically save it for you."

"We're really excited about capturing those moments for you," he continued. "That's what Xbox One gives us right off the bat." He even hinted that there could be more Xbox One features, but that he couldn't divulge them just yet.

FIFA 14 producer Santiago Jaramillo couldn't speak to any specific differences between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One versions of the game, but he did emphasize that EA Sports' next-gen Ignite engine makes the Xbox One version superior.

"The Xbox One version has a lot of things that are unique to it because it's the generation of consoles where we have the Ignite engine," he said. "All these different things make the game feel very different and also look very different on the next-gen consoles compared to the previous ones."

It makes a "big difference," he added.

It's been some time since the last NBA Live game came out, and the series has been hit by delays and cancellations. The newest game, NBA Live 14, is exclusive to next-gen consoles, so unfortunately we can only compare it to past NBA Live titles.

But the game's producer and executive producer, Ryan Ferwerda and Sean O'Brien, respectively, assured us that this game would not have been possible on the Xbox 360 and PS3. That's because they'll be updating it every single day with new player stats and tendencies, roster updates, new challenges, and new real-life games that can be played within the virtual NBA league.

"What really is unique is all the connected features that we have," Ferwerda said. "In this case we have 'live season,' which is really something we could only do with gen 4. Using that constantly updated data we have, we can actually go in and create challenges and moments from the actual league the night that they happen."

Unlike some of the other games we're talking about here, Battlefield 4 features some massive differences between generations.

"The big difference is that you can play a full scale battlefield [in the Xbox One version]," Battlefield 4 Lead Multiplayer Designer Thomas Andersson said. "We have 64 players instead of 24, which means the all out warfare that we're pushing for and that we love is for the first time available for console owners."

The Xbox One version also runs at 60 frames per second, "another big thing where the feedback is much more direct and feels much more smooth to play," Andersson said.

In fact, aside from the controls the Battlefield 4 experience on Xbox One and PS4 is virtually identical to the PC version. But players can also use the Xbox One's new Kinect to lean out of cover, by leaning their bodies to the right or left, and to use voice commands to notify other players that they need ammo or medical support.

Finally, the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Battlefield 4 also feature the full "Battlelog," where you see your stats, see your progression, post challenges for other players, and do more. Unlike on the Xbox 360 and PS3, this mode is fully integrated into the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game.

The upcoming Madden 25 has the same advantages on Xbox One over the Xbox 360 version that FIFA 14 does: the Ignite engine makes it a more advanced game, especially in terms of graphics, effects and animations. But there's one other important Xbox One-exclusive feature that EA Sports was eager to show off.

"The big thing that we're demonstrating today is the fact that we've got an exclusive feature with Madden NFL 25 on Xbox One that utilizes Smartglass technology," Madden 25 Producer Thomas Singleton told us. "We're calling it our 'CoachGlass' feature. It's an experience that's literally a defensive coordinator live in your living room with you. Using the companion app what you're able to do is physically call in defensive plays into the experience while you're playing live in the actual game."

Madden 25 CoachGlass collects crowdsourced data about what the community is doing in various situations. "CoachGlass then recommends those same offensive sets for you to select live and push them immediately into the game," Singleton explained. "So instead of us saying here's what we know about the sport of football, here's what's successful, instead we're like: this is what's actually working. This is what the community at large is actually doing."

EA Ghosts' Luke Herbert, a game designer on Need for Speed Rivals, at first struggled to come up with any non-graphical differences between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One versions of the game.

"What we've actually tried to do is push all the consoles to their limits and what we want to offer is the same experience for Xbox 360 players and Xbox One players," he said. "Yes there is a difference in terms of visual quality. But in terms of gameplay we've tried to keep that as similar as possible."

But as we played the game one subtle improvement in the Xbox One version emerged: the game takes full advantage of the Xbox One controller's Impulse Triggers.

"What we've also got as well is the trigger rumble on Xbox One, which is kind of cool. Our driving experience team were very big on this. they wanted the player feedback in the controller and they've been working very hard on that," Herbert explained. "It's all about immersing the player in the experience—that they are in control of the car, and that the car is also fighting against them. You're driving around in these vehicles that can go 200 miles per hour, and you really feel it in the triggers."

Project Spark is a game-playing and game creation tool that will ultimately be available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Windows 8. But all the versions will be significantly different. The Xbox One version, for example, will feature deep SmartGlass and Kinect integration.

And the coolest thing that Kinect adds to the Xbox One version of Project Spark is undoubtedly honest-to-goodness performance capture. "With Kinect we can record your facial animation, your full body animation, and we can also record your voice to create your own sound effects," Project Spark Lead Designer Bradley Rebh told us. "Whatever you want to make, you can make, and then share that up to the cloud, and somebody on the Windows platform can download your animation and use that in their own game."

And that definitely will not be possible using the Xbox 360's inferior Kinect.

What next-gen games are you looking forward to playing? How do you think they'll be better than this generation's games? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!