If the game is installed on another console, and that console owner no longer has access to the disc, the owner has the option of unlocking the install on their hard drive by purchasing it through Xbox Live; the installed game then acts as a game installed on the hard drive. Solving most of the major problems through Castle Crashers, the background compatibility team decided to let the program be announced at E3 2015 with plans to have one hundred titles available by the end of 2015. At its launch, the Xbox One did not have native backward compatibility with original Xbox or Xbox 360 games, and at the time Microsoft stated it had no plans for any form of backward compatibility on the console. Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition on April 16, 2019, which included three digital games, Forza Horizon 3, Sea of Thieves and Minecraft.

The finish made it a little easier to maintain a stable grip while fighting rebel scum, and my accuracy improved.

Xbox One supports Universal Windows Platform apps, which can be designed to run across Xbox One, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Mobile in synchronization with the Windows platform. Xbox One consoles bundled with digital copies of specific games have also been released, including Titanfall and Forza Motorsport 5.

To celebrate the launch of the Xbox One X, a limited-edition 1TB Xbox One X Project Scorpio edition was made available on November 7, 2017. Nick Pino of TechRadar, giving it four stars out of five, similarly felt that the Xbox One "[felt] more like a media titan today than it did 12 months ago," citing OneGuide, Upload Studio, and Microsoft's decision to drop the Xbox Live Gold requirement for multimedia streaming apps, and that "there's still a lot of potential locked away inside the hardware of the system that developers are just beginning to figure out. Microsoft's Xbox One S is a great entry-level console for consumers who are new to gaming, or wish to pick up a machine which doubles as a 4K blu-ray player. It isn’t just about fierce bright areas and inky blacks: the fine increments between are subtly drawn too, and you get plenty of shadow detail. The primary difference between the two consoles is that the Xbox Series X displays games at native 4K and comes equipped with a UHD Blu-ray Disc player.Button mapping available via Xbox Accessories app for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows 10/11; app for Windows 10/11 requires compatible USB-C cable (sold separately). This is half of the 36 million units of the PlayStation 4 that Sony claimed at the time, but higher than that of the Xbox One's other main competitor, Nintendo's Wii U, which sold 12.