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Xbox 360 Gets Backwards Compatible, Final Fantasy
databeam writes "The official Xbox 360 press conference was Monday evening, and an AP article has news that the 360 is backwards compatible, and that Square Enix will be releasing Final Fantasy XI for the console." Coverage also available at Gamespot. From the article: "Along with a firm release date and price point, the other big question surrounding the 360 was backward compatibility with the library of games from the original Xbox. Robbie Bach, senior vice president and chief Xbox officer in the Home and Entertainment Division at Microsoft, made Xbox fans around the world happy when he announced that the 360 will indeed play Xbox games." Mostly. Gamasutra points out that backwards compatibility will be selective, with most but not all of the top selling games supported. Kotaku and the Guardian Gamesblog have firsthand accounts from the event, and to watch the conference for yourself Xbox.com has the footage. Update: 05/18 20:49 GMT by Z : Of course, not all the people there were people, if you catch my meaning.
... now that both of the 2 fully announced consoles have their predecessors games to back them up, I feel it's actually a fair competition on which console has the games that people want.
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Who really cares if it's backward compatable? If you have old games play them on the old system. Besides how many old games do most people play now anyway? Once you've beat Jade Empire or moved from FIFA 2003 to FIFA 2006 going back isn't usually a lot of fun. Maybe in 10 years or so.
Since they can't change the game, I wonder if they'll do this by working over some of the code that the ships in the Xbox360. They do something like that in Windows.
more of the same on Twitter.
Backwards compatability will be selective? Does this mean that they will be emulating the xbox hardware? Thats pretty amazing if it works, but I have my doubts that it will even run as smooth as the current xbox. Hopefully this means a much faster virtualpc, so I can play pc games on my mac.
Now we know why Microsoft bought the company that made the best x86 emulator for PowerPC on the market. Actually, we might have guessed that earlier - nice to have it confirmed though.
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From TFA:
Microsoft Corp. said on Monday its new Xbox 360 will run video games developed for the earlier generation of its gaming machine
This doesn't state backwards compatibility. It could just mean that older games will be ported to the 360.
Bach said that it won't necessarily run all of the older Xbox titles but instead, run the "top-selling" games.
Uh huh. This sounds very much like ports to me. This sounds very much like Sony's PSP running old PS1 games.
I never had a PS1 prior to owning my PS2, so for me it was like getting two systems in one. Also, I think the price will drop on a lot of the 'older' XBox games that are stil highly playable and fun. Parents especially will have the choice of dropping 50-60 bucks on a new Xbox 360 game or getting 2 or 3 'classic' Xbox games for the same price.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
that this is a kneejerk announcement by Microsoft in response to the PS3.
There's probably lots of Microsoft engineers now trying to figure out how to hack backwards compatability into an almost-finished product, after a 'just make it happen but don't change the deadline' directive from the boss yesterday.
Like all projects with that mandate, quality is the first to go. To the end user, that means many old games will probably not work well, if at all.
For the backward compatibility, does the Xbox 360 have an x86 processor in addition to the PowerPC? Or does it emulate the x86?
Nintendo in-house games are great, but if they don't get 3rd-party support, it'll start making a lot of sense just to make games for the other 2 systems rather than try to juggle both hardware and software. Sega went that path and I don't see why that Metroid and Mario can't show up on XBox 720 or PS4 in the future.
It may turn out that it is not "perfectly" backwards compatible: so what the XBOX 360 guys need to do is run and validate specific XBOX titles, and ensure that the specific title works properly. It may turn out that for any unvalidated titles, it's a case of "suck it and see": they may or may not work.
I don't know which is bigger news, the backwards compatability or the fact that MSFT was able to get Square to bring the FF series to the 360!
They only announced XI - which was actually "announced" in so many words years ago by Square. It's actually surprising it took them this long - it was supposed to come out on the original Xbox.
(I don't recall the original quotes they used, but it was something like "coming for next-generation systems", which at the time only meant the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube... though given the lack of online capability for the GameCube back then, that system was basically ruled out.)
My thinking is Square has had this in the pipeline since then, and at some point MS said to them "you know, why not just make this an Xbox 360 launch title?" They've clearly been holding back certain games for that purpose - Perfect Dark Zero being another example.
I doubt you'll be seeing the non-online FF's on Xbox. Square just showed both FFXII for PS2 and FFVII(??) on PS3 yesterday, which suggests to me that they're still basically in bed with Sony for the main lineage of story-driven FF games... though they will probably continue to release side FF projects like FFXI and FF:CC on other systems.
(Of course, what I wanna know is why Square needs to keep teasing us with this FFVII crap, then saying it's not actually coming out - just re-release the game on PS3 already!)
Emulation is never really that "easy". Unless the X-box and ps3's graphic controller is compatable, I kinda doubt it would be possible. And how on earth are you goin to split up X86 instruction code so that it can run on seperate parts of the cell processor?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It greatly helps during initial console launch/soon after, when the library of new games isn't there yet. And I play quite a lot PS1 games still (new ones - for me at least)
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hince incompatible with lightgun and STEEL BATTALION. This may just be a "CYA" type "selective compatibility" since all the games work with the wireless controller.
just my $0.02
With "some, but not all" games being supported for backwards compatibility, there's no reason to believe that *any* games will work as originally intended. You can't call it backwards compatible if... well, it's not backwards compatible.
I can just see it already. Microsoft will heavily promote the XBox 360 as being "Backwards Compatible**"
** But not really. Actually, only Halo2 is compatible. Everything else is subject to this nice little disclaimer here.
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Keep in mind that both Sony and Microsoft make most of their profits from licensing fees relating to game sales. So if Sony opened up their next generation console to Microsoft XBOX 1 games, they would stand to lose revenue.
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"was based on a standard X86 PC to begin with"
Not in the least. XBox may be x86-based, but it is by no means a PC. It's ceratinly "PC like" in several regards, but it has a very nonstandard BIOS, custom DRM chips, and a custom chipset that's not PC compatible.
The closest thing to the XBox in the PC world is probably NVIDIA's NForce chipset, which is not surprising considering that it is derived from XBox technology. But NForce is still a long way from the XBox.
Just like Hollywood.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff