Slashdot Mirror
Will Xbox2 Be Backward Compatible?
An anonymous reader submits "In an interview on Wired News, Bob Wiederhold, President and CEO of Transitive Corporation said QuickTransit will allow the Xbox Next (aka Xbox2, which will have a PowerPC CPU) to run first-generation Xbox games which were written for an x86 Intel chip.
Transitive is a provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system pairs.
This could mean Microsoft will after all make their next generation consoles backward compatible, unlike what was announced in June." I can't quite tell how hypothetically he's speaking; the no-performance-hit OS switching the article talks about sounds pretty hard to believe.
..that we already had this exact story on the front page a couple days ago, i believe this whole thing is bullshit, i mean, c'mon, their demo was for the 'linux' version of Quake 3 on the Mac -- could they not choose a game which was already on the Mac?
i d= 4429
and also, i think GamesIndustry.biz said it best:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?a
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The Xbox 2 rumour mill has turned over once again, after a Silicon Valley start-up boasted that a new piece of software emulation technology would allow the next-generation console to play original Xbox games.
QuickTransit, a piece of software originally developed by a computer science professor at Manchester University in the UK, allows the "transparent" emulation of software across different hardware platforms, its makers claim.
Revealing the software to the world, Transitive Corp demonstrated the system running Linux software (presumably compiled on different processor architecture) on Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh systems at performance which, the company says, is indistinguishable from native platform performance.
The comment that has sparked interest in the games industry, however, is a statement from Transitive CEO Bob Wiederhold, who said that the QuickTransit software will allow the next-generation Xbox to run software designed for the current console.
It's not clear whether this is meant to mean that Transitive is actually working with Microsoft on Xenon emulation technology, but a number of factors make this seem like an unlikely scenario.
For a start, the Wired article in which Wiederhold's claim appeared went on to say that Transitive has six customers, all of whom are as yet unnamed and all of whom are PC manufacturers, with no mention of any Microsoft relationship.
Besides, what works for a PC or server environment in terms of emulation isn't necessarily the same thing that will work for a console - which has limited memory, a key constraint on the QuickTransit system, which interprets recognised blocks of code by replacing them with functionally identical blocks for the native processor.
Regardless of how fast QuickTransit's code is, it will also still face major issues in translating the graphics functions of existing Xbox titles, which are written for an NVIDIA chip, into functions on Xbox 2, which will use an ATI chip - not just technical issues, but potentially legal issues as well.
Sources close to NVIDIA have previously hinted that they do not believe that Xbox 2 can play Xbox games without violating NVIDIA intellectual property rights, and that they may take legal action if the Xbox 2 does boast this functionality.
In face of this, it would appear much more likely that Wiederhold simply chose the Xbox and Xbox 2 scenario as an example of one problem which would be made easier to solve using the technology being marketed by his company.
However, the games industry at large is likely to keep a close eye on developments at Transitive in future - as any technology which allows new hardware to cheaply emulate older consoles and platforms would be welcomed by many companies in the market.
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C'mon guys, how many times have we heard of this exact claim from some unknown company, and its turned out bullshit every time!
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
Backward compatibility is the way to go. Nintendo's Game Boy line has benefitted quite a bit by allowing newer machines to play older games. I don't see why it wouldn't also apply to console systems.
... but thats not the point!
... quite the contrary, apart from a few un-completed ps1 games the majority of my gaming fun on PS2 has been with PS2 flavor games.
This is an interesting twist on a previous slashdot discussion.
However lets put the facts on the table. One of the nice things about Sony's console is the backward compatibility. I am a PS2 person and for me its backward compatibility with PS1 was a definite bonus for me when I bought my next console. Upgrading from PS1 to PS2 for me was a no-brainer, it meant that my old console games would still work on the new box! In retrospect though, it did not neccesarily mean that i still play ps1 games on my ps2,
However I remember thinking and discussing with freinds that if Sony were to make PS2 backward compatible with PS1 they could corner the market... Of course that was before M$ got on the scene. Im not a M$ fan and it will take some huge changes before i feel otherwise, however, from a "make it work" perspective M$ have to make XBOX II backward compatible, even if it is purely from a psychological perspective. People like to beleive that their back-catalogue of game purchases are still viable. Having said that Sony are a generation ahead, PS3 will play all games and beyond. They made some good decisions in the past and it seems that M$ would be silly not to follow suit.
It seems that transitive have an interesting technology, but what is more eye-opening is that microsoft are building on a platform that isnt x86 and that "has" to be a good thing - no matter how much I hate the swines.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
You need to recompile an app when you move it from x86 Linux to PPC Linux. I don't think the source code to XBox games was included on the DVD last time I checked.
Guess who purchased the company who made Virtual PC?
They already have solid x86-on-PPC emulation code.
If this is true, then MS would probably be forced to include a hard drive in the new system in some form, whether it's built in or a removeable one. Some games use it for caching, and most companies don't bother to optimize Xbox save files for size since size is no object on an Xbox.
This isn't gonna happen for 4 reasons:
:)
1. Emulating an nVidia gpu that is only a few years old. There just won't be adequate processing power for this... Look at console emulation as it is right now. The best example of modern console emulation is with the original Playstation being emulated pretty well, but still not full speed with all games. The Playstation is more than 10 years old.
2. Emulation of an nVidia chip would cause some legal problems I believe.
3. Lack of Hard drive in XBOX 2. This has come straight from M$. How are the old games that use the hard drive going to deal with that?
4. No White and Black buttons on the XBOX 2 controllers. According to M$, the XBOX 2 controller is going to use all the same buttons and joysticks as the current one, except they are getting rid of the black and white buttons. How are the old games that use those two buttons gonna handle that?? No more Flashlight in Halo I guess
1- they changed CPU architectures.
2- They changed GPU's and the previous GPU is hevaily heavily copyrighted.
3- they have only 5-10 games worth playing on Xbox
4- Emu of 3d graphics w/o glitches is a dream. Even ps2 had glitches and it included the god damn hardware.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I'd bet dollars to donuts you aren't married.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...