Several delisted Xbox 360 games briefly reappeared on the Xbox Store this week before being pulled again, according to the Better xCloud datamining account, which monitors Microsoft‘s cloud gaming backend for changes. This follows Xbox Vice President Jason Ronald’s commitment at GDC 2026 in March to revive the company’s backward compatibility program as part of Xbox’s 25th anniversary later this year.
This happened again, this time with Aegis Wing and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. What’s happening 👀?Meanwhile, Mars: War Logs (X360) got delisted unannounced. https://t.co/2eKp2ZnvvI pic.twitter.com/cwykCPFSFCApril 3, 2026
One or two accidental relists might mean nothing, but the pattern across four titles in quick succession has understandably caught attention. The Better xCloud account, run by the developer behind the browser plugin of the same name, first flagged Armed and Dangerous as a possible mistake before noting that subsequent appearances looked intentional.
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At GDC 2026 in San Francisco, Ronald told attendees that the game preservation team would be “rolling out new ways to play some of the most iconic games from our past” as part of Xbox’s 25th anniversary celebrations. Microsoft discontinued its backward compatibility program in 2021, citing licensing issues and technical limitations that prevented further titles from being added to the catalog.
The program originally launched in 2015 and brought hundreds of original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles to Xbox One and later Xbox Series X|S. At its peak, the catalog included over 600 titles spanning two console generations. Since the hiatus, fan demand for its return has remained high, with the community-run Xbox Game Preservation website tracking which Original Xbox titles players most want to see come back. Top-requested games on the site include Jet Set Radio Future, Sonic Heroes, and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
All this raises questions about how backward compatibility will work on Project Helix, Microsoft’s next-generation console powered by a custom AMD SoC. Microsoft has confirmed that Helix will play both Xbox console and PC games, and Ronald described the machine as delivering an “order of magnitude” leap in ray tracing performance at the same GDC presentation.
Speculation has centered on the possibility that Microsoft’s preservation team is working to bring Xbox 360 emulation to Windows PCs, which would keep older titles accessible on both Helix and standard Windows 11 machines, but Microsoft hasn’t confirmed that.
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