One of the biggest wins at the launch of the Xbox Series X and PS5 was the commitment of both companies to backward compatibility. Now, however, it appears that Microsoft's game consoles are extending their lead on this front.

Only a small number of PS4 games will malfunction, and even fewer Xbox One games will not work, but for the most part it's a great addition for early adopters looking to catch up on the great games they missed on the previous generation consoles.

However, it is clear that Microsoft has the upper hand.

While both consoles can play last-generation games at ever-higher frame rates, it seems that only the Xbox Series X version is allowing developers to exploit its potential. Last week, Activision applied a patch to "Call of Duty: Warzone" on the Xbox Series X to support 120 frames per second, but not to the PS5.

Eurogamer reported the reason for this; Activision did not comment, but Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, was more forthright. The process is far simpler on Microsoft's hardware than it is on Sony's, and the extra hurdles for Psyonix seem to make it unfeasible at this time.

"Our team's main focus this year has been on the recent move to free-to-play and updating key features like the tournament system," said Psyonix's CEO, David Harris. Because of this, we had to make some tough decisions about what else we could achieve: enabling 120hz on the Xbox Series X|S is a minor patch, but to enable it on the PS5 would require a full A native port would be required and unfortunately was not possible as we were focused on other things."

As Eurogamer points out, Sony could change this if it wanted to, as PSVR games can run at 1080p and up to 120Hz, but that is serious business on the company's part, and it seems unlikely the company would bother at this point. Backward compatibility seems important now due to the limited number of games on the PS5, but its relevance will slowly diminish over time.

Besides, it is worth remembering that the number of people who can enjoy 120 fps gameplay is limited anyway. Most TVs are fixed at 60 Hz, limiting the frame rate to 60 fps. And while the best TVs with HDMI 2.1 ports that support 4K signals at 120 Hz are available today, the majority of people will not be getting them anytime soon.

For those who do, and for those with an extensive library of previous generation games, the Xbox Series X seems to be the way to go.