What were the results of the test?
Those words don't mean they have 100s of titles already working; they mean they've had the time to test 100s of titles.
What we don't know is what percentage fail, what percentage have small issues vs large ones, or how extensive the fixes have to be.
We don't have the data, only indications - of the snapshot of the top 100 games tested, Cerny said 'almost all' worked. They then said in their blog post that they expect the 'overwhelming majority' of all games to work, that they had tested hundreds, and will be testing thousands on the way to launch. You have to presume the expectation re. the 'overwhelming majority' is based on testing done to date.
Of course we will see, but I think the signalling is pretty clear that they expect thousands to be tested by launch and that they expect so far that most of those should be compatible. Another update on how testing is going would be welcome in the interim - if they could say 'thousands are working' at some point, it would bring them to where MS is on the numbers front, from a messaging point of view. And maybe they will.
So that's good news.. but it appears it all requires developers to patch games.
It doesn't. Some may require patches, not all.
To be fair, Microsoft's approach to Backwards Compatibility this generation has been a huge success. (360 and OG Xbox)They don't have much to prove there and have gone even further to have it working without a "boost mode" to take advantage of the hardware, HDR via machine learning and many other features.
Microsoft's BC strategy is already in place this generation so it leaves very little doubt for people on the approach for Series X BC.
[Update 9/14/20: We’re happy to share that backward compatible titles will be coming to Xbox Series S as well as Xbox Series X. To deliver the highest quality backwards compatible experience consistent with the developer’s original intent, the Xbox Series S runs the Xbox One S version of...
news.xbox.com
To be fair, their BC support has been partial. It's been very good where it is working, but it's not all encompassing. It doesn't demonstrate an ability to bring over entire catalogs across hetereogenous architectures, seamlessly. And MS has slightly danced around the question of whether
all games will be compatible. Arguably Sony has been a little bit more forthcoming about that - and maybe that's indeed just because Sony's compatibility rate will be less than Microsoft's, or because Sony has less confidence because of less abstraction in their systems. Or maybe it's just because they're being more conservative in their messaging.
