360's Backwards Compatibility Weak?

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that the backwards compatibility that Microsoft offered up at the Monday press conference may not be anything approaching what we're used to. Due to the massive design changes in the shift from the Xbox to the 360, Xbox titles may have to be recompiled in order to work on the next-gen console. From the article: "The news has raised more questions than it answers, however, as it suggests that gamers may need to purchase titles they already own in order to play them on an Xbox 360 - and almost certainly means that only a sub-set of Xbox games will ever be playable on the new console." Update: 05/20 15:08 GMT by Z : The article has been updated with a quote from MS specifically saying that gamers will *not* need to repurchase Xbox titles to play them on the 360.

Comments

Backwards compatible?

[NickHydroxide]

How can this be called backwards compatibility? If this is true, then this really is a poor showing from MS.

The only way they may avoid pissing too many people off, and making such a system viable is to offer the recompiled versions available for free download for people who have already purchased that particular game.

As TFA states, though, backwards compatibility for a small class of games is idiotic.

If this is accurate

[Xxanmorph]

I wouldn't really call that "backwards compatible", more like "not backwards compatible".

Re:If this is accurate

[Babbster]

Except that right in TFA, it says this:

"At launch, Xbox 360 will be backward compatible with the top Xbox games," Xbox PR manager Michael Wolf told GamesIndustry.biz today. "Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new 'version' - your original games will work on Xbox 360."

What I read from that is that a) they're working on emulation and b) the top priority is to get the top-selling games working. This is very similar to MAME people getting something like "Donkey Kong" to work before worrying about more obscure titles like "League Bowling." Admittedly, it's a different process overall, but prioritization in this fashion seems very reasonable (though I guess Tecmo fans who wanted to play PS1 Gallop Racer on their PS2 might disagree).

One advantage that Xbox 360 seems to have is that they should be able to update their emulator through Xbox Live as time goes by and they work out any kinks in the process.

In other words, let the speculation about whether there will be backwards compatibility in Xbox 360 end, and let the speculation about specific games that WON'T work in the 360 begin.

Re:Recompiled? Bullcrap.

[interiot]

It's much more than simply the instruction set is different:

• the CPU instruction set is different
• the GPU instruction set is different
• there are Three different CPU's, so you really want to get as much code running in parallel as possible

In short, the differences are fairly massive. Transmeta has the ability to run code fast on one core... backwards compatibility for the XBox requires running code fast on the equivalent of 2-3 cores... not an easy job.

Backwards compatibility is hard

[AndrewStephens]

I am sure that a lot of comments are going to say the 360 is powerful enough to emulate the slowish x86 in the current xbox, which is true. Unfortunately, it isn't that simple - the rest of the hardware (graphics/sound/controller, etc) is different as well. It may be that Microsoft decided that it was more trouble than it was worth.

Personally, I think it is a mistake, but obviously Microsoft couldn't afford to pull a playstation2 and put an entire PS1 on the die. This is the downside of going with off-the-shelf parts and not designing your own chips. No way were they ever going to convince Intel and whoever did their video hardware on the xbox to provide a mega-cheap shrunken version that they could cram onto the 360 motherboard.

Re:Backwards compatibility is hard

[sehryan]

It can't be that hard. Nintendo is making the Revolution compatible with their entire catalog of games going back to the NES days.

I'll say it again: THEIR ENTIRE CATALOG OF GAMES

And yet, the Revolution is the smallest console shown at E3, and Nintendo is hoping to make it even smaller before launch.

Microsoft cares not for the gaming community, only how to make money off of them. Why let you play Halo and Halo 2 on the 360 for free, when you can pay to buy those games again?

This is cynical.

[cluke]

Basically, they do not have backwards compatibility in the proper sense of the term, but as it is perceived to be such a make or break feature, they are just going to LIE about it??

Free, but for a price?

[sloose]

A bit of speculation here, but I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft gave the recompiled versions out for free over Xbox Live, but only to people who are gold subscribers. Could be a good ploy to get people who aren't interested in Xbox Live to join up.

Re:Just How Much Worse Can It Get For Microsoft?

[chrismcdirty]

Don't you know that "under $465" is advertiser speak for $464.99? Watch a commercial that actually advertises a price. Every single one of them says under [price figure], then shows in small print that the actually price is a penny less.

Re:Just How Much Worse Can It Get For Microsoft?

[KDR_11k]

Additionally, Goldman Sachs believes the XBox 360 will cost more than expected. Brace yourself for two 450 dollar consoles.

On the other hand, the first estimate of the PSP price was around 450 US Dollars as well.

If the thing has enough storage

[dtfinch]

They could just ship the xbox 360 with the recompiled binaries for the top x games, and just detect when one of those CD's is inserted and run the embedded version instead. There's no added piracy risk, because they're useless without the data from the CD anyway, so it's just a matter of them asking the game publisher "hey, do you want it to work or not?" and then getting it to work.

Re:What a load of trolls

[cluke]

You don't emulate games, man, you emulate hard-ware. So, if what you're saying is they are going to do a half-assed emulator 'just good enough' to run a selected sub-set of games, then fair enough but that isn't backwards compatibility.

Re:Wether they have it or not

[barawn]

I know for a fact that if a console doesn't have backwards compatability, you have to really convince them otherwise to buy it, because they HATE wasting money on games....

But the parents won't ask "Is this backwards compatible?" just like they won't ask "Does this have the AltiVec vector instruction set for the PowerPC?" (Note that I don't know, nor care, whether it does :) )

They'll say "Can Jimmy play the Xbox games he already has on it?" and they can't say "Yes" if this is true. They'll probably also ask "can he play these games on it?" and point to the $10 preowned Xbox section, and they'll have to say "No". They'll then ask "which ones can he play" and the people will point to the $30-$60 Xbox 360 games. And I'm assuming that rereleased Xbox games will be in the $30 range. Maybe.

That's the point with backward compatibility. It's not about playing your old games. Microsoft didn't demolish the competition in the last generation - hell, it's not even guaranteed that they'll end up in 2nd place, as Microsoft's shifting to Xbox 360, Nintendo's still got Zelda: Twilight Princess, and only 2 million consoles separate the two worldwide.

So not everyone has an Xbox. Backwards compatibility gives people cheap games to buy at launch. Cheap, as in $10 cheap. And when you're asking people to plunk down $300-400 on a console, there better be $10 cheap games. And I don't honestly think that companies could recompile an old game for the Xbox 360, bug test it thoroughly, fix any bugs (because oh, there will be bugs), rinse, repeat, then redo the box art, manufacture the game, repackage, and redistribute, and still sell the game for $10-15.

That's what backwards compatibility really means to consumers. $10-15 games at launch. If they don't have that, it just doesn't matter.

I wouldn't be surprised

[Dr. Spork]

Also, since the 360 ships with a hard drive, they could just put the recompiled binaries for current games on the machine ahead of time.

I wouln't be surprised if this really was their plan. That's maybe why they say they'll only support the "most popular" games, to avoid having to cram the hard drive full of stuff.

I can imagine this working pretty well, that is, being pretty much seamless to the the normal Joe User. For the obscure games, they may program the 360 to pop up a window when the disk is inserted asking you if you want to download a "compatibility patch" from Microsoft. The Xbox1 disks pressed more recently might include this compatibility patch on them. Yeah, not exactly optimal, but not catastrophic either.

The bonus is that the recompiled games might be set to run explicitly in 720p and with all sorts of anti-aliasing and other fancy graphics stuff that the first xbox can't do. This may encourage people to buy the 360 just to see their favorite games looking better. (I wonder if the PS3 will offer something similar for PS2 games...)

Re:Recompiled? Bullcrap.

[frikazoyd]

Recompiles on the fly? Huh? Look, there's currently two ways to get incompatible software to run efficiently.

1: Total recompile. Problem with that is, if it is closed source code, you have to re-release that, which is what the article implies.

2: Emulation. Meaning, you have an application that takes the instructions and "on the fly" converts them into useable instructions.

Now, what the heck is "recompiling on the fly"? If I understand correctly, you mean it re-interprets the source code as you go along. But the old games are in binary, so all you have is the instructions. Oh, wait that's emulation. Besides, if you tried compiling then running an executable before it is done compiling, you're going to run out of program to run before it is done compiling.

Anyway, all this talk of emulating the Xbox is a bit of hooey. You need a LOT more machine than you want to emulate in order to properly do it, without stutter. A lot more than the difference between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox.

Not Backwards Compatibility

[calibanDNS]

Nintendo does this with the GBA and old NES and SNES games, but at least they have the balls to admit that they're just using it to try to make more money with a new system and old properties instead of claiming it is 'backwards compatibility' between the GBA and SNES.

As long as MS and XBox developers allow owners of the original XBox games to download these updates to the old games for free, it should be acceptable. But otherwise, this is a scam. And in no way can this be called 'backwards compatibility'.

The Bleem Strategy

[blueZhift]

Back in the day, there was a copy called Bleem that essentially sold emulators for the Sega Dreamcast that allowed it to play selected Playstation games, such as Gran Turismo 2, etc.. You would have to buy the appropriate "Bleem Pack" to play a given set of games. Perhaps Xbox 360 backwards compatibility will take this approach. The Xbox would download the appropriate patches and settings to play a given previous generation game. If they can support say the 50 most popular Xbox games, then they may be able to get away with it. Heck, the PS2 does not play 100 percent of the first generation Playstation games either.

In any case, if the end user has to go out and buy a title again, then backwards compatibility is a lie and I sincerely hope that Sony and Nintendo pummels them mercilessly! Seriously though, I think Microsoft will pull it off somehow. They have more than enough resources and talent to do the job. Yeah, I know, this is /., MS is evil! But they _do_ have a lot of talented and passionate people working on this. So I think they'll pull it off.

Nice Try

[rAiNsT0rm]

As I've been modded a troll for saying exactly this, maybe now people will realize that there is no way to make the Xbox backwards compatible. The Xbox was a cobbled together console based on PC hardware with no way to provide backwards compatibility on a PPC CPU... this is Slashdot you'd think more people could have figured this out from the initial announcement, but alas the hype has gotten the better of a lot of fanboys.

I hate to tell you too that the shared memory of the Xbox 360 is going to be a downfall, as bandwidth is going to be a big issue. Developers are already grumbling about this. That 22Gb/s bandwith is going to be eaten up pretty quickly with all of the bandwidth hungry components fighting for their share. Do some simple math on the numbers involved with HD resolutions, AA, system processing, memory, and other overhead and the XBOX 360's shiny hype-filled exterior begins to dull a bit... it is most definitely NOT 15 times more powerful than the Xbox. Sony is actually pretty on target with the Xbox 1.5 comments. (I'm no longer a Sony guy either, so this is not said with any bias or loyalty.)

The Revolution has this game in the bag by playing the backfield right now. Let the two "Big Guns" slug it out and sling all the mud they want at each other while no one even targets them... then once the fervor is over release the full details and have no easy open media forum for rebuttal. They spring a few new titles, release the innovations of their controller, their low price-point, and the reality that their processing power is right in line with the competition, and bingo you've got a winner.