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Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility Finalized
News for nerds writes "Microsoft has finally announced the list of the 213 Xbox 1 games playable on Xbox 360 at launch. A software emulator is required for each original Xbox game, which means you need an HDD for these games to work on Xbox 360. While it is expected that the list will grow in future via Live update, as of now it lacks first-party titles such as Project Gotham Racing, and other popular titles such as DOAU/X, Doom 3, Far Cry, KUF, Panzer Dragoon Orta, the Splinter Cell series, and the SW: Battlefront series." Xbox.com is also featuring an interview with Todd Homdahl about the quest for compatibility.
Looks like the entire thing will be (as expected) run off of software emulation. Really, considering the technical challenges involved (I know, software emulation isn't impossible, but the fact that it can run the system at full speed on a completly different hardware type is nice) I'm pleasently surprised at the number of games already available. I also like the fact that the system will run all your old games in HiDef and add a layer of FSAA (almost like the old Sega 32x).
"Risc is good..."
The could offer some sort of trade-in program where you could get the new version of the game on the cheap if you turned in your old disk. Of course most of these games are non-Microsoft products, so such a program would need to be offered by lots of different companies. In the long run this would probably have been cheaper than trying to implement backwards compatibility. Many times the best solution to a technical problem isn't technical.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Xbox.com: What criteria do you use in choosing which Xbox games will be backward compatible on Xbox 360? How far back into the Xbox game library are you going to go?
Todd: When we say Xbox library, we mean the entire Xbox library. This ranges all the way from our launch in 2001 up to games that haven't even shipped yet.
If they can do 241 games in a few months, including writing the emulator, I don't imagine the rest will take that long. In the meantime, you'll just have to be content with running your Xbox games on your Xbox, tough as that is.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
In the interview, he mentions that people who don't have the Live service will be able to download the new binaries to their computers, burn a cd, put that in their 360 and it'll update. I predict that this is the exact mechanism that will initially be exploited to allow arbitrary code to run on these things. Just a hunch...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.