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.

Comments

The heat is on...

[Mister Impressive]

... 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.

Patches?

[Metaphorically]

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.

Emulation

[Chode2235]

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.

Re:Emulation

[AusG4]

Well, no...

The new XBox obviously is going to be based around the PowerPC instruction set, whereas the old XBox is based around the IA32 instruction set. They would need to emulate the CPU in realtime, translating IA32 instructions into PowerPC instructions. This is the biggest issue.

Beyond that, though I'm not sure yet, I'm imagining that XBox360 will actually run Windows, the same as the current XBox. Windows NT for the PowerPC was still a shipping product in the 3.51 days, so technically, porting the Windows 2000 variant OS that is current the on the current XBox to PowerPC is obviously possible. That said, this will obviously include all of the DirectX API's, and as a result, the API translation step is not strictly necessary.

The actual hardware emulation part is pretty clear - Microsoft recently purchased VirtualPC (which lets you run Windows on the Macintosh, which of course is PowerPC based). Anyone who thought they did this simply to have a nice, new Macintosh product is insane... clearly, they intended other uses for this beyond just the "Windows Virtual Server" product they have released, and I'm betting that emulating XBox on XBox 360 is the big one.

As I said, if they are using Windows/PPC on 360, then this saves them some of the overhead of VirtualPC strictly, in that they have the native API's available directly. Obviously a new version of DirectX is going to be used on 360, but shimming the old version in shouldn't (relatively speaking) be a huge problem.

Additionally, any games that multithreaded on XBox1 will obviously be able to have the NT kernel map those threads on to the multiple cores of the 360.

Long and short... am sure this can be done - is just a matter of how compatible they'll make it; though if Live has shown us anything it's that Microsoft is a little patch-happy with the XBox (a little too much, some would say).

Re:Why?

[chrismcdirty]

After you shell out $350 for the console, you may only get one or two games. And if your shiny new console can play games from your cruddy old console, then you can trade in the cruddy old one, or put it into storage.

I don't know about you, but I have something plugged into just about every input hole on my TV, and I hate switching cords around.

Connectix?

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Connectix?

[leonbev]

I think that they bought them to get Virtual PC, so they would have a competing product for VMWare. Virtual server products are getting more popular now, and development teams are spending big money on them.

Having a good emulation team for the XBOX 360 is a nice bonus, though.

Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[Psykechan]

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.

Re:Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[MasT3quila]

The PS2 does not play ALL PS1 games. So it's not an unheard of travesty that the XBOX 360 won't play ALL XBOX games. From http://www.psextreme.com/features/faq.htm "Is the PS2 backward compatible with all PlayStation games? According to SCEA, there are a handful of PS One games that experience problems when played on a PS2. These games include: Arcade Party Pack, Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari 2, Fighter Maker, Final Fantasy Anthology, International Track and Field, Judge Dredd, Monkey Hero, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Tomba. Note that this does not necessarily mean the entire game is unplayable, only that there is a known compatibility issue with a certain feature or part of the game. "

Re:Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[XxtraLarGe]

The PS2 does not play ALL PS1 games. So it's not an unheard of travesty that the XBOX 360 won't play ALL XBOX games.

There's a big difference though. Only a handful of PS1 games don't run on the PS2, while it sounds like only a handful of XBox games ("best selling") will run on XBox 360.

Re:Why?

[Anita Coney]

Because most people would rather have one console next to their TV versus two or three.

Can you imagine how asinine it'd be if every couple years DVD players were incompatible with prior DVDs?! Sure you COULD buy five DVD players, but that'd be asinine.

It makes a great selling point

[WickedClean]

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.

Re:No longer Big-N

[grungebox]

Gamecube was a distant 3rd in the console scene

*yawn* Baseless assertions bore me. The Gamecube did about as well at the XBox in the US, and completely destroyed it in Japan. If you add that up, it makes the Gamecube much more potent than the XBox, in terms of sales. If you mean hype/PR, then maybe the Gamecube lags, but Nintendo's press conference isn't till today, anyway.

Selective Compatibility?

[duerra]

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.