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Jason Ronald

Jason Ronald

Led Xbox's backward-compatibility and game-preservation program
Biography

Jason Ronald is a Microsoft executive best known as the public face of Xbox's backward-compatibility and game-preservation efforts. A program-management leader within Xbox, later identified as a vice president working on next-generation hardware and platform strategy, he ran the program that brought original Xbox and Xbox 360 games forward onto modern consoles, in many cases running them at higher resolutions and frame rates than the originals through features such as FPS Boost.

Ronald became one of the industry's most vocal advocates for treating games as a cultural record worth keeping playable. In interviews he framed the work as preservation rather than commerce: "It's not about selling more copies," he said. "It's about preserving the art form that we know and love." He also argued that owning a game should behave like owning other media: "There's no other medium, like music or movies, where if you choose to buy a new device, your catalog doesn't come forward with you. We want that same kind of experience with games."

Under his stewardship, Xbox built the strongest backward-compatibility track record among the major console makers.

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