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.

Comments

that sucks

[hector_uk]

i'm currently playing far cry and battlefront 2 on my xbox, i guess i'll have to keep it for a little while longer... damn you microsoft, damn you to hell, if apple devs can bust out with universal binarys why cant you.

Re:that sucks

[imsabbel]

your xbox isnt magically going to vanish, you know?

Re:that sucks

[wootest]

Because they didn't know the specific architecture of the Xbox 360 when they made the original Xbox games?

Re:that sucks

[hector_uk]

i could possibly hazard a guess that the download is just a different executable that runs from the HD accessing the data on the game disk. as as for me still having an xbox i was not planning to, i was going to pass it on to my sister and boyfriend, never mind the fact that the thing is giant and i dont really have the room for two consoles with a G5, a pc, a 17" powerbook and a dell 24" LCD on a titchy dorm desk.

Re:that sucks

[jimicus]

if apple devs can bust out with universal binarys why cant you

Erm... Maybe because a universal binary isn't. It's two binaries - one for x86 and one for PPC. (Not sure if they're both rolled into the same file, but that's not really relevant).

You have to compile an application as a universal binary - it doesn't magically become that way.

Re:that sucks

[hector_uk]

i did not imply otherwise, a dual binary is not required though it would have been a good idea for all xbox games currently being released, it's just i was pointing out the laziness of the game devs for not tweaking and recompiling, so i suppose it's not MS's fault but the devs, but still. and it's two separate executables rolled into one file, hence if you get a universal OS X app and you show the package contents you can see both separate executables. though the bungie weekly update seems to indicate it's an emulator though tweaks are needed for allot of games, i wish Microsoft would just tell everyone exactly how they are doing this.

Re:that sucks

[November 1, 2005]

Most? Where does that idea come from? I'd expect that some people might sell their current XBox to fund an XBox 360 but I don't see any reason to believe that most people will do that. Of course, this is Slashdot where it's incredibly easy to just announce facts that could only be known through a statistical survey. AC, why do you do this to us?

Re:that sucks

[DrunkenTerror]

Selling working hardware with games you love to get a shinnier box that doesn't play the games you love? Who's the dumbass again?

And just who is going to be buying all these xboxes? Anyone who ever wanted an xbox has one now, and once the 360 is out, everyone will want THAT instead of the old one. Looking at ebay shows an awful lot of xboxes already for sale, and most of them seem to be selling at less than $100. You can see lots of xboxs with people asking $200 plus for 'em, and most of those aren't getting bid on. The market will only get more saturated once the 360 is out. I wouldn't bet on getting much for your old one. Just keep it and work 2 extra days to cover the $75 bucks you might get for it.

Re:that sucks

[Retroneous]

Perhaps you could put your obviously mammoth penis away. That would make space.

Oh no, that's just what you WANT us to think...

Re:that sucks

[Levilprivateer]

No, not everyone who has ever wanted an XBox has one now. I, for example, tend to wait until a console is at least a generation old before I purchase it. I can't see paying $200 or close to it for a console when I can get perfectly functional consoles with cheap games for much less. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who does this.

As far as saturation goes... yes, the market will be saturated, no doubt about that. However, I can't see a real reason beyond laziness for Microsoft not releasing a console that is fully compatible with the previous generation of games. If Sony can do it with the Playstation, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft is somehow unable to do it. Perhaps they planned poorly, or perhaps they just didn't see the need for it. All I know is that my PS2 plays my PS1 games perfectly... and without me having to have a hard drive to make them work.

Re:that sucks

[Chubby_C]

my question is: how many generations forward should they carry compatibility forward?

You can't expect them to keep adding to the cost of new consoles by essentially encompassing parts of the old one for emulation.

besides if you have a whole wack of xbox games you most likely have an xbox, play them on that.

Re:that sucks

[mrtivo]

You're that cheap that you'll wait years to save $100?

Re:that sucks

[Durinthal]

So don't buy a 360 until it has the games that you want to play. That way you won't have to sell your original console until then either.

Re:that sucks

[norton_I]

Probably several hundred dollars, since the real cost is the games, which may go from $50 to $15. Even for a

Re:that sucks

[mrtivo]

He was talking about buying the XBOX. Right now you can get a brand new one for $149. I think it debuted at $299 so I should have said save $150. :)
I guess if you're a tightwad or are poor I can see $150 making a small difference in your life.

Re:that sucks

[forkazoo]

In theory, that doesn't matter. You could just make an extensible fat-binary format. The Xbox would boot the binaries that were tagged as being "XBOX" and ignore any other binaries. Likewise, the 360 could load the binaries tagged as "X360" or whatever.

I just can't imagine why they would bother. The devs for the OP's games wouldn't have bothered to make the games also available in a format for a console that didn't exist when the games were released, at no extra charge. It would have been a huge amount of bother, for no real obvious gain. They will eventually release a new 360 version of their games, and as far as they are concerned, backwards compatibility is MSFT's problem. All it means to them is that people have slightly less reason to buy the new Battlefront 360, or whatever.

Re:that sucks

[Rosyna]

and it's two separate executables rolled into one file, hence if you get a universal OS X app and you show the package contents you can see both separate executables.

No, you won't. They're two architectures rolled into one file. libSystem.dylib is such a universal file. It is not a package so you cannot show the package contents.

Re:that sucks

[Levilprivateer]

Simple answer: Yes. Complex answer: As mentioned, I'm not only saving money on the system, I'm saving money on games too. I can save, for example, $30 a game by waiting for it to drop to the "Greatest Hits" price of $20. More to the point, though, I don't care about playing the latest games as they come out. I almost never buy a game when it comes out... and when I do, I only play a couple of nights a week, if that. It has nothing to do with cheapness, it has to do with priorities. I have others things I'd like to spend that $100 on. While I enjoy videogames, they do not define my existence. I can wait for them to be what I consider reasonably priced. That goes for consoles too. There's nothing cheap about prioritizing where your money goes.

Re:that sucks

[kosmicki]

I also waited to get an Xbox, waiting for the price to drop. Picked up a used one for $100 and chipped it, now I use it as a media center (XBMC). Also get tons o' games used for around $20 now. So I'll be using it for quite a while. Sadly x264 is too much work for it. Only an 800MHz processor, so it tends to skip on mine. :(

I plan on getting a PS2 sometime in the future, most likely once PS3 is out. Market is already getting full of PS2s, once PSTwos(the new small ones) start to show up, the original ones will be dirt cheap. Why am I waiting so long? There are maybe a dozen games I want to play that are PS2 only, so it's not a big deal for me to wait.

Re:that sucks

[hunterx11]

Universal binaries are fine when the hardware is abstracted from the software, and it is largely a matter of recompiliing.

When you are writing for a specific hardware platform, however, "universal binaries" means "let's write two sets of code."

Re:that sucks

[Doctor_Jest]

I am willing to bet that soon after the 360 hits the shelves, we'll see the XBox price drop to $99... and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS2 hit $99 "just in time for the holiday thunder-grab" by Sony.

So, make that $200, and it DOES make a difference. You don't have to be a tightwad to realize $150-$200 is not "pocket change..."

Of course, not all of us can be independently wealthy like yourself. :)

Re:that sucks

[Babbster]

Are you looking at the Xbox Brand End Table or, perhaps, the new footstool advertising "Xbox Inside!"?

I know the Xbox is huge compared to the other two (soon, three) game consoles, but it can be handled by one person. As a bonus, it doesn't necessarily have to be hardwired into the power outlet and the TV.

Re:that sucks

[Hugonz]

Yeah, word is they couldn't get that feature out on time...

Re:that sucks

[jimicus]

There is that too ;)

Though my understanding is that modern consoles provide an API in the form of a developer's kit with most of the basic stuff already written, so there's no need for games developers to dive into hardware-specific stuff.

Whether or not they do, however, is another matter entirely....

Re:that sucks

[TheScottishGuy]

it wasn't laziness it was hardware compatability, and to be fair to Ms, once they realised how much people wanted backwards compatability they put a lot of time and money into making it happen, looks like they have a decent solution here, and i just hope that the backwards compatability emulators are worked on to a better schedule than downloadable content was back when live! launched.

Re:that sucks

[TheScottishGuy]

because sony have continued to use similar hardware architecture, Micosoft didn't, get over it.

Re:that sucks

[Levilprivateer]

Okay... point. Microsoft did make the system backwards compatible after they realized there was a demand for it. However... Microsoft was the company that made the equipment incompatible in the first place; they designed the Xbox 360. Additionally, not recognizing the need for backwards compatibility was somewhat blind of them, I have to say.

Re:that sucks

[The Black Dragon]

I'm not sure that MS knew they were going to change the Intel architecture in the Xbox to the Power PC architecture in the Xbox 360. When a game is created for a console, the devs will usually completely optimize the game for the specific console hardware. After seeing the recomendations MS sends to devs who don't have the SDK to begin working on their games prior to getting the SDK, they give specialized instructions on how to optimize the games to work on the Xbox and Xbox 360. These instructions give me the idea that most devs really go deep into optimization, and taking that opitmization to a completely different platform would cause the games not to work at all. Really, what I thought that MS would do would be to create a fully working emulator to emulate the Xbox within the Xbox 360. That, however, can cause security issues for the Xbox 360 platform because people have already figured out how to hack the Xbox. If the emulator got hacked, then the underlying platform could be hacked as well. I'm not sure how the download will work, but I'm pretty sure that they're doing this to keep hacks out of the Xbox Live area.

PS2 and PS1 games?

[jamesjw]

Why not just build something with built in hardware emulation? like the PS2 does with PS1 games - i know its not 100% but it makes sense to do it this way doesnt it?

-- Jim.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[ScottyUK]

Didn't Sony include the essential bits of the PS1 system in the PS2 in order to allow backwards compatibility? I don't think NVIDIA would let Microsoft do this, as they own the rights to the graphics card used in the Xbox.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Quick Sick Nick]

It's makes perfect sense, but from a technological aspect it's impossible. The Xbox 360 uses a treo of PowerPC processors to run games, in sharp contrast to an intel pentium III of the original xbox. A lot of code simply will not go over. Given these constraints, Microsoft could have either said "fuck it, no backwards compatibility" or they could try their best to port some games anyway. I'm glad they chose the latter.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[TheIndifferentiate]

I don't think MS planned on backwards compatibility and only looked into it when they realized how much people would want it (re, it may cost them some sales). By then, it was too late to do anything in hardware. The backwards compatibility is achieved through emulation software, so you have to have the full version of the 360 with the harddrive to store it.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Station]

It was impossible to include hardware backwards compatilbility because of the hardware shift. Sony, who owns their own chip designs (and now so does microsoft) could just use old PS chips in the hardware itself. Notice this still didn't allow for full compatibility. Now that the new Xbox is run on PowerPC instead of Intel, it would mean that for hardware emulation they would need to have what amounts to an entire Xbox in there (not to mention another Geforce3). Software was the right choice, and as long as it doesn't look any different, whats the difference? It even allows for patches (another reason MS went with Silver and Gold Live services, to be able to provide content to ALL users.)

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[mcbridematt]

Uhh, Pretty sure NVIDIA has given Microsoft the finger and stopped producing the NV2A GPU... no true hardware emulation there. I'm guessing NVIDIA lawyers have already been annoying M$ lawyers on how they intend to emulate any proprietary GPU features in the NV2A.

Intel would've killed the custom P3 CPU they were using if M$ couldn't get the GPU's for the boxes, so they'd need to stick in a real x86 CPU. All I see from Intel is "LETS COOK EGGS UNTIL MID WAY THIS YEAR". AMD, pfft, can't supply enough right now, VIA, you must be kidding.

Plus, Microsoft is loosing money on each original Xbox. Why would they want to double their losses?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[keyne9]

Why not? Sounds reasonable, yes? Aside from, you know, requiring a hard drive (extra 100$), you mean?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Kjella]

Given these constraints, Microsoft could have either said "fuck it, no backwards compatibility" or they could try their best to port some games anyway. I'm glad they chose the latter.

Chose and chose. Not having backwards compatibility on a console is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot. I suppose the current effort could be described as "We only grazed the foot".

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[shaka999]

The PS2 essentially included the base hardware of the PS1. Processor included. Since this is the comparison made by the root post I think the point is that MS could have included a full PIII class processor for backwards compatibility.

Taking this approach its far from impossible. Expensive yes, impossible no.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[nathanh]

Didn't Sony include the essential bits of the PS1 system in the PS2 in order to allow backwards compatibility?

Correct. The IOP (IO processor) on the PS2 normally handles input from the DVD, game controllers, USB, etc. However it's basically a souped up version of the PSX CPU with all the associated bits, so send it the right instructions and it detaches from the EE (main processors) and the system becomes a nearly 100% compatible PSX.

Sony could do this because the PSX CPU was 33MHz and had 2MB SDRAM and mere kilobytes of graphics memory. When the PS2 was being made the cost of each IOP must have been measured in tens of cents. The Xbox 360 is being released too soon after the Xbox; the 733MHz Celeron plus the NV25 GPU is still fairly expensive.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Quarters]

Since when did not having backwards compatability become, "shooting yourself in the foot"? Outside of Nintendo's handheld devices, the extra hardware to let the Sega Genesis play Master System cartridges, and the PS2's ability to play certain PS1 games there really aren't many examples of backward compatibility in consoles.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[bigman2003]

"Sole exception of about ten...."

I can see why you hide behind that AC facade.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[superpulpsicle]

The backward compatibility was never a problem for Genesis. The Master System cartridge converter was like $20.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[lopingrhondo]

microsoft is paying a royalty to nvidia for the 360

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Txiasaeia]

There sure is: the revo will be backwards compatible for gamecube (and earlier Nintendo) consoles, and the PS3 is apparently backwards compatible (if not 100%, then close to it). If the Xbox360 is only partially BC and the other two are (for the most part), then they could be shooting themselves in the foot with regard to competition in the next gen. If somebody needs to keep their Xbox to play Xbox games because it won't play *all* their Xbox games, what's to stop this theoretical person from getting a PS3 or Revo instead?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Kjella]

Since when did not having backwards compatability become, "shooting yourself in the foot"?

Since your two biggest competitors (Sony PS3, Nintendo revolution) have announced that feature? And that it was one of the major reasons the Dreamcast was hurled into obscurity and securing the Playstation's spot as market leader?

Outside of Nintendo's handheld devices, the extra hardware to let the Sega Genesis play Master System cartridges, and the PS2's ability to play certain PS1 games there really aren't many examples of backward compatibility in consoles.

If by "certain" you mean all except 10 out of 8000, even the controllers were largly compatible. The new slimline model is getting complaints because it is incompatible with 7 PS2 and 40 PS1 games. That's 0,5% of the PS1 games, up from 0,13%. The two market leaders, Nintendo (handheld) and Sony (console) are doing it, those that haven't have failed. Can you say "formula for success"? If that was supposed to be an argument against me, it's a pretty pathetic one.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[original_nickname]

Errm, nope.

My Powerbook G4 with one slow PPC (1.5 Ghz) can get the performance of a 400 Mhz intel Celery (with all of the instructions).

The product? Micro$oft Virtual PC :)

They bought this at about the time the XBox 360 was going to be a PPC - so I'm sure they use it. This would give them a nice virtual Pentium III, and don't both consoles use some special version of DirectX? the sys calls could be reimplemented for the (much more powerful!) new graphics card in the 360.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[sznupi]

Actually, PS1 has 1MB of Video RAM (also models starting from around 98 have 4MB main RAM...but that's moot point anyway since it was used at most as data buffer, often not at all).
But of course your argumentation is correct.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[badasscat]

Since your two biggest competitors (Sony PS3, Nintendo revolution) have announced that feature? And that it was one of the major reasons the Dreamcast was hurled into obscurity and securing the Playstation's spot as market leader?

So in your mind, the history of game consoles starts in 1999?

The PS1 was obviously not backward compatible with anything and it did pretty well. Same deal with the original Xbox.

Hardware manufacturers made the mistake of putting too much stock in backward compatibility in 1982-1983 too (the Atari 5200, Mattel Intellivision and Coleco Vision all featured adapters that were compatible with the Atari 2600). You know what happened? Every single one of them - every single company making systems at that time - lost so much money with that strategy that they exited the industry within a year. (And probably directly because of that strategy, because it allowed developers to continue dumping poor-quality, obsolete Atari 2600 cartridges on the market, taking attention and shelf space away from the new systems and diluting the market.)

Atari came back in 1987 with the 7800, which was compatible with the 2600 out of the box. You know what happened? The NES - which was not backward compatible with anything - blew it out of the water.

Neither Sony nor MS could even exist in the video game industry if backward compatibility was a requirement for success. They came very late to the party when established makers dominated the industry, and their all-new products did pretty well, I think you'll agree.

Can you say "formula for success"?

No. The results of backward compatibility in the marketplace are mixed at best. For every success (the Game Boy, the PS2) there are probably a half dozen failures. And for every successful console that did feature backward compatibility, there are half a dozen other successful consoles that didn't.

I'd say the record pretty much proves that backward compatibility is mostly a non-issue. There's no "formula" for anything contained in this one feature. It is just a feature. Some people want it, some people don't care, just like some people want a hard drive and some people don't care or some people want custom soundtracks in their games and some people don't care. Is it probably a good thing to include if you can, as simply another feature to attract a subset of gamers? Sure, but if you focus so much on that one feature at the expense of everything else, your console will be a failure. By the same token, if you decide early on that backward compatibility will be too difficult to implement, and you instead work on nailing everything else about the system, then your console will be a success. But success or failure does not hinge on this one feature and history has proven it time and time again.

Note that I am not predicting that the Xbox 360 will be as popular as the PS3; I don't think it will be. But it's not because I think a bunch of people are going to be spending $400 on a PS3 to play their old PS2 games. There are a variety of reasons why I have this opinion, but none of them have to do with the 360's backward compatibility.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[BasilBrush]

So in your mind, the history of game consoles starts in 1999?

It's nothing to do with history. It's to do with what the current compatition are doing. And they are both going to be backwards compatible.

Neither Sony nor MS could even exist in the video game industry if backward compatibility was a requirement for success.

MS is neither here nor there because they didn't win the last console war. Sony did, in no small part because of it's backwards compatibility to the winner of the previous generation. The only console that MS beat was the GC which also wasn't BC. Sony PS1 obviously wasn't BC, but then it wasn't competing against a system that was.

But it's not because I think a bunch of people are going to be spending $400 on a PS3 to play their old PS2 games.

Few people want to lose access to the bunch of games they already have sitting on their shelf, and few except hardcore games geeks want to have more than one console plugged into their TV or to have to swap consoles over when they want to play a different game. So given the choice of a next gen console, they are more likely to pick one that is compatible with the games they already have than one that isn't.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Hatta]

Oh, that's rich. The Dreamcast flopped because it couldn't play SATURN games? You think there were throngs and throngs of Saturn owners with massive collectons which they were desperate to play on a modern machine?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[AkumAPRIME]

If they did it that way, it would be too hackable. In order to ensure that I can't do all the kickass things with the 360 I can do with my XboX, they had to emulate the original, as opposed to using OG hardware.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[faragon]

Sony Playstation:

R3051 @33MHz w/ 2MB RAM (DRAM, not SDRAM)

GPU w/ 1MB VRAM

SPU w/ 512KB RAM

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[TheRaven64]

Or they could've talked to a company like HP about the hardware emulation they did for IA32 instructions for the Itanium.

Or they could have talked to a company like Connectix who make a very nice x86 emulator for PowerPC. Well, maybe not Connectix - they got bought by some company from Redmond, so they'd probably be the people to talk to.

Of course, most XBox games use Directx heavily, so a lot could be done by simply putting a byte-swapping wrapper around DirectX and emulating the game code, and for pure-CPU emulation the x86 emulator that Microsft make comes fairly close to native performance - it mainly looses out on memory accesses (easily fixed if you control the hardware) and I/O (fixed since it would all be done via native DirectX).

It is a significant sign that Microsoft have lost the plot that they can't work out how to do this - all of their best people seem to work in Microsoft Research, which seems to have been banned from ever turning things into products.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[RoLi]

Since when did not having backwards compatability become, "shooting yourself in the foot"?

Since Sony released the PS2.

Seriously.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Superfarstucker]

Suffice to say, if you think having two sets of RCA or component jacks in the back of your reciever is something only a "hardcore geek" would have, you are an idiot. Any joe sixpack that buys decent hardware (the kind that is going to go drop 600.00 on a bloody console) is likely to have some sort of input switcher, even if they don't have a reciever, hell, my tv has 5 component inputs and 2 hdmi inputs, and it is pretty much bargain barrel when it comes to HD. A non trivial number of people who have two or more of the next generation consoles hooked up. The fact is, backwards compatibility only serves as a holiday buffer to make people go dump the cash on the console that has next to no games for it. 6 months from now, almost nobody will care.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[KDR_11k]

[car analogy warning]

Back when Ford introduced the Model T there was no such thing as ABS or an automatic gearshift and the T lacked many basic features like seatbelts but if you built a car like that today noone sane would buy it.It may not have been standard that long ago but now it has become standard.

Now that all new consoles are offering backwards compatibility that can and probably will indeed be a deciding factor for potential early adopters. Sure, few use that feature but that doesn't mean people won't change their buying decisions because of it. It sounds better on paper and Joe Sixpack who's buying the system for EA Sports games anyway will prefer the system that sounds the best to him in the store, not what countless reviews say on the matter.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[teh*fink]

Plus, Microsoft is loosing money on each original Xbox.

Does this mean Microsoft is holding a burgeoning moneybag over each original XBox, suddently unleashing a torrent of crisp bills all over its glistening black & green plastic exterior?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[teh*fink]

The Xbox 360 uses a treo of PowerPC processors to run games...

WOW this is totally incorrect. first of all, the XBOX 360 doesn't use a treo at all, to run ANYTHING. where the hell did you hear that?? second, the latest treo's use either intel's PXA270 chip or an ARM processor...and get this, the fastest of of those two processors is just 312 MHz!!! i'd like to see you play doom3 with that. and THIRD, even if MS decided to use a freakin' TREO in the XBOX 360...which as i said is totally ludicrous...how the hell are you going to fit 3 3.2 GHz PowerPC chips in a goddamn TREO?? have you seen the size of those things??

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[BasilBrush]

Suffice to say, if you think having two sets of RCA or component jacks in the back of your reciever is something only a "hardcore geek" would have, you are an idiot.

Suffice it to say you are the idiot for trying to argue a straw man. My Last two TVs have 2 SCARTS in the back and component input in the front. But that's not what I said, stupid. Just because there are extra inputs there doesn't mean you want 2 consoles on top of all the other boxes already under the TV.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[faragon]

Wrong.

4MB models were never for the mainstream market, just game development machines ("blue playstation", with more memory for allowing debugging, also were able to play CD-R without mod-chip -therefore also used in game magazines for running CD-R beta previews-, etc).

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[duckpoopy]

DIrectX doesn't care whether you have an NVidia card or an ATI card. Why does the XDK? Is there no hardware abstraction layer?

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Babbster]

The Revolution will NOT be backwards compatible beyond the Gamecube - unless you think that they're going to include cartridge slots? Any games previous to Gamecube that are playable on the Revolution will be those that Nintendo decides to sell/rent/whatever from their online service. And they'll be played on what? Yes, software emulators.

"If somebody needs to keep their Xbox to play Xbox games because it won't play *all* their Xbox games, what's to stop this theoretical person from getting a PS3 or Revo instead?"

Nothing, but what's going to stop them from wanting an Xbox 360? The answer, of course, is the same one that's always true: People buy new videogame consoles to play new games. The only exceptions to this are the people who want all the new fancy stuff and, as always, those people are going to want ALL of the new fancy stuff.

Bottom line is that PS3 and Revolution aren't going to get huge exclusive sales from people who owned Xboxes and lots of games and are frustrated that not every one of their old games is playable on the Xbox 360. That person who really enjoyed the Xbox is still going to be that much more likely to buy an Xbox 360.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal Gear Solid (can freeze at end of credits due to interrupt desync in the kernel, only happens on early emu versions, as later versions have a patch)

Final Fantasy VIII (fails cheat cartridge check on the first emulator version, so won't boot; subsequent emu versions fixed - also, graphic corruption in some areas)

Chrono Cross (timing's too tight for some versions, FMV bitrates are slightly too high, so can cause skipping (set to Fast and the problem mostly goes away) and the AKAO sound kernel can bug out owing to the slightly different filtershape of the PS2 SPU reverb, because sound was carefully engineered for PS SPU reverb only)

Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions (EU release of VR missions - fails completely, because of an incompatibility with the disk checking and the PS2's drive mechanism - you can perform a runtime patch of this with the right cheat code hardware, or you can burn a copy of the disc which starts the PS-X EXE that's not in the root, but in the folder on the disc; that will directly run the game, skipping the chainloader, so you don't need to play swapsies for it to work)

There's four more right there from my own personal collection.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[sznupi]

Wrong.

At least "classic" PAL models starting with the first one shipping with Dual Shock (I don't remember exact model number) had 4MB of main RAM. As I've said, it was rarely/never used (probably it was just cost cutting measure - it was cheaper to use such chips starting from end of 98)

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Txiasaeia]

The Revolution will NOT be backwards compatible beyond the Gamecube - unless you think that they're going to include cartridge slots? Any games previous to Gamecube that are playable on the Revolution will be those that Nintendo decides to sell/rent/whatever from their online service. And they'll be played on what? Yes, software emulators.

From IGN's Revolution FAQ: "At E3 2005, Shigeru Miyamoto said: "We have not set a price or determined a list of software for the Nintendo Revolution download service. But, we're looking at this as a consumer service and not so much from the business end. What we want to do is provide the product that is going to make the Revolution the console that people want in their homes. So it actually might be driven from the consumer end rather than from us. You know, the games that they most want might be the ones that we do. From a technological point, we can do any of them. It's just, we haven't determined which ones we'll do yet.""

If they're not looking at selling these ROMs from a business end, it seems to me that they're going to either give them away or sell them for a negligible price. Now, this might not be "backwards compatibility" with the NES, SNES, and N64, but it's as close as you're going to get. I'd rather get these ROMs legally from Nintendo than play them illegally through an Xbox/Xbox360 anyway.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Tenken]

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, the lack of smileys of any sort leads me to believe that you're being serious. The logical assumption would be that the parent post mispelled trio as treo, no one in their right mind would think that the 360 is using Treo processors. He is correct, the 360 is using "a group of three" IBM processors. You may want to lay off the caffeine before you reply--

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Doppler00]

It's makes perfect sense, but from a technological aspect it's impossible.
Of course it isn't technologicall impossible! The only question is how much time and money does Microsoft want to spend perfecting an emulation layer? My guess is that if the new platform is at least twice as fast as the old one, than emulation is possible. If they had some kind of JIT compiler, they could optimize the hell out of the exsiting XBOX 1 games to run on the XBOX 360 just fine. The main problem is probably the graphics chipset. Since they are switching from Nvidia to ATI (is that right?) there may not be a one-to-one instruction corresponding to the new video system, thus they may have to cut corners and some games may not render the same as the original.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[faragon]

Seems that we have different fonts, so the contradiction. No problem, with a bit of contrast we'll achieve the truth ;-)
I'll show my cards, I hope you can do the same:

Classic PAL model first introduced the Dual Shock was the model 7502 circa 1998 (I own two of these, and I'm also european).

You reported nothing about your information fonts. Here is mine (I speak from memory, but I personally **saw** these boards):

Original Playstation main system RAM:

4x 60ns NEC 8-bit data path, 60ns fast fage DRAM chips (4 * 512Kbit * 8 bit == 2 megabytes)

Playstation model 7502:

1x 60ns Toshiba 32-bit data path 60ns fast page DRAM chip (1 * 512Kbit * 32bit == 2 megabytes)

Many years ago I spent tons of hours programming the PSX (I also did something with 9002 models, when teaming with friends), and I never could address more than the 2MB (without counting the MIPS address mirroring). For loading the software I used Action Replay parallel port hardware flashed with Caetla firmware, also the PSX Xplorer cart, and homebrewed burned CD's (one of my 7502 has a mod-chip).

I'm specially interested in high resolution Playstation motherboard snapshots, and also some information about the Playstation to PsOne system on chip integration engineering process. Any detailed information is welcome.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[TheNetAvenger]

I don't think NVIDIA would let Microsoft do this, as they own the rights to the graphics card used in the Xbox.

It has nothing to do with NVidia, comes down to cost plain and simple. Why add in another $40 to the hardware when you can achieve the majority of what you want by taking advantage of a faster CPU/GPU.

For the offset cost for Microsoft and hence the consumer, a person could buy an Original XBox practically.

Also, as for NVidia, if Microsoft wanted to include the 'essentials' of hardware from the original XBox, they could use any GPU, just as long as they met the specifications of hardware level DirectX support.

Game development on the XBox abstracted the actual GPU for the most part, since it was basically a Windows 2000 OS running DirectX and games were built using this modded DirectX environment.

NVidia made out well in the XBox deal, they basically got enough development money (before royalties) to drive the Geforce4 TI and FX series of card technology, and then per unit sales on top of that. In a freaky way, Microsoft bascially paid for the R&D that later became the Ti and FX series of cards, which was a very good thing for NVidia and the PC consumers as well.

Just like we will see ATI technology from the 360 brought into PC Video cards in the next year, again R&D MS paid for, that ATI will be able to capitalize on.

However notice the owership differences between the XBox and the new 360, the GPU and CPU are both owned by Microsoft this time. So at least ATI can't decide they want more money later on like NVIdia did and it also won't lock Microsoft, they can have whoever they want produce the chips.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Deadguy2322]

Except it wasn't a cartridge adapter, it was a full SMS chipset using the cart port on the genesis for power and a/v output.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Deadguy2322]

There were in Japan. A stronger Japanese presence may have encouraged SEGA to stick around in North America a little longer. The Saturn was a close second to the playstation in Japan up until near the end.

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[Babbster]

First off, I should note that I have no problem at all with Nintendo's concept as far as letting people play old games goes. I think it's a great idea. My point was merely that it in no way has anything to do with backwards compatibility. Unless you can plug the original games (the backwards part) into the new system (the compatibility part), it's just a complete misuse of the term.

As for giving them away or selling them for a "negligible" price: Not a chance in hell. They can make as much noise about how they're doing it "for the people" as they want but if you're believing that malarky then I think you're engaging nostalgia more than your brain. If they give away, or sell dirt cheap, an old game that means less time on a new game, a new game that is dripping the tasty sauce of huge profit margin and, at minimum, usually needs to recoup its development cost. This concept also goes against what Nintendo has been doing for years now which is repackaging old properties and selling them for - or very near - full price.

I no more believe Nintendo on this topic than I would believe any game company a year or more before the launch of a new product or service...especially when they're being as vague as the quote you provided...

Re:PS2 and PS1 games?

[sznupi]

My source is a friend close to Sony. He "lived" out of reporting for example such things...and had somehow privileged position among others.

The fact that you couldn't adress it could mean for example that it was in reality not even rarelly used, but never, due to firmare for example. Or perhaps it was automagically used as an extension to CDROM cache present from the start, I don't know/care (you have some means to check that?)

Anyway I never cared about this additional amount...

Software Emulation

[Station]

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).

Re:Software Emulation

[3vi1]

That's exactly what the 360 needs to make it a resounding success: More features that cause people to draw direct comparisons between it and the Sega32x.

Wait... that can't be right....

Re:Software Emulation

[lordofthechia]

"That's exactly what the 360 needs to make it a resounding success: More features that cause people to draw direct comparisons between it and the Sega32x."

See, why couldn't Microsoft relase the 360 as an "add-on" to the X-Box? Then they could have released their real next next-gen console in a year or two. As to how such an add-on would attach to the system is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Software Emulation

[3vi1]

See, why couldn't Microsoft relase the 360 as an "add-on" to the X-Box? Then they could have released their real next next-gen console in a year or two. As to how such an add-on would attach to the system is left as an exercise for the reader.

Either you misunderstood my sarcasm, or you're playing at a whole other level way above my league.

Re:Software Emulation

[lordofthechia]

"Either you misunderstood my sarcasm..."

Yup, I was being facetious. Though I'm a Sega fanboy, I must admit the 32x was a dismal failure by Sega of America. Seeing the 360 follow in its footsteps would cause me no sorrow (and just like the 32x, the 360 seems like it's being rushed to market and not thoroughly thought out).

As it is the PS2 makes a great accessory/stand/add-on for the X-Box. Just place it snugly under the X-Box and you'll instantly quintuple the number of games you can play!*

* Video switcher sold sepearately. Not intended as flame bait. Any similary to flamebait is merely coincidental. Author makes no warranty as to the validity of the claims established herein.
Warning: Use of a PS2 as an X-Box stand may void it's warranty and cause loss of respect from your X-Box fan buddies, Sony fan buddies, and/or both.

At least they are trying

[Nichotin]

It seems like there are a lot of problems making it work just by inserting an old disc, given that the xbox 360 runs on radically different hardware, and that a hardware emulation layer would add even more to the expenses. I would have dropped backwards compat. if I were in this position, so it is at least good to see them try.

Re:At least they are trying

[fimbulvetr]

Oh yes, whenever I spend over 400 dollars on a product, I am not really concerned with quality and how well it performs, but just some vague touchy-feel notion that at least the company 'tried'

Oh so you're an apple fan then? You'll fit right in here on slashdot.

Re:At least they are trying

[Stonent1]

This is the way see it. MS has probably rewritten the standard libraries for the Xbox so that they route calls to the appropriate places on the 360. The main executable has been recompiled for PPC and linked against these new libraries. The majority of what is on the DVD is not executable but audio, textures and video. So the game launches from the HD and still grabs the meat of what it needs from the DVD. Maybe the games that aren't working are the ones that attempt to bypass the DirectX-like interface that the Xbox games normally use, or games that use an extensive amount of x86 assembly.

What they've done is incredible!

[J. T. MacLeod]

Yes, they've manage to not include in their list a SINGLE game I care about!

Seriously. Wow.

Re:What they've done is incredible!

[ctishman]

I can't say I agree. I can't seem to fathom why they chose a list of 200+ C-list games to port instead of, say, 10 A-listers and added the B & C lists later. Was that 200+ number so important?

Re:What they've done is incredible!

[Blakey Rat]

It does have some strange omissions. For instance, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II is on there, but not Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance I or other games that use the same graphics engine. But I'm assuming that's more because the testers haven't gotten around to trying it, not necessarily because it's not going to work.

What titles in particular are you concerned about? It covers most of the A-list titles I own. Except Mechwarrior, another strange omission. Most of the C-list games I own aren't on there... even the ones I like, which is a shame.

Re:What they've done is incredible!

[AndyS]

Where's PGR 1&2 (both games with massive live communities)

Burnout?

Pretty piss poor list. I'm annoyed I didn't get the Burnouts on the PS2 - at least then I could have played them on a PS3.

Re:What they've done is incredible!

[toddestan]

Why the hell would someone buy Burnout for the xbox???

The PS2 version has the best graphics by far.

Because they have an XBox and not a PS2?

Pretty screwed up

[external400kdiskette]

It's going to look bad marketing a machine with backwards compatability when the backwards compatability consists of the emulation of *some* games assuming you have the more expensive xbox and the *hope* of more support in future.

Re:Pretty screwed up

[Quarters]

That's exactly how the PS2's backward compatibility worked when it was released. Only PS1 games written using the Sony libraries was compatible. Any game that was developed by going directly to the hardware wasn't supported. That meant that most later-cycle PS1 games wouldn't work.

Re:Pretty screwed up

[heinousjay]

As 'someone who has written a lot of console code' you don't seem to understand too well how this works. Ports, indeed.

Re:Pretty screwed up

[heinousjay]

The thing is, porting is a name for a very specific process, which (and this part is important to my point) isn't occurring here.

I really don't care about things sounding 'good' or 'bad.' I don't get emotionally attached to my consoles, and I don't understand people who do. I just object to calling this porting when it obviously isn't. Sorry that this stance doesn't jibe with your 'must make the 360 look bad' stance, but that's your problem, not mine.

Well, at least it's a start.

[Turken]

I was honestly only expecting maybe a few dozen of the most popular titles, so I'm pleasantly surprised at the quantity of supported games. Now if only they can work on the quality of the supported games...

My collection

[ninjakoala]

Just to give you an idea of how bad it looks at the moment, here is my collection divided into working and not working:

Working:
Amped, Colin McRae '04, Dead or Alive 3, Fable, Forza Motorsport, Fusion Frenzy, Halo, Halo 2, Jade Empire, Phantom Crash, Sega GT 2002, Knights of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Republic 2, The Thing

Not working:
The Bard's Tale, Blood Wake, Burnout, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair, Morrowind, F1 Career Challenge, Project Zero, Gunvalkyrie, Knockout Kings 2002, Links 2004, Mechassault, Outlaw Golf, OutRun 2, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Phantasy Star Online I+II, Project Gotham Racing 2, Rainbow Six 3, Rallisport Challenge 2. Jet Set Radio, Serious Sam, Shenmue 2, Splinter Cell, Taito Legends, Unreal Championship, Wreckless, Yager

And here I was thinking "oh, ok, a couple of my games won't work... worst case scenario half won't work". This is just crazy though. I hope they boost the compatibility in a big way, or I just can't see my self upgrading, since that would mean I would have to keep the current black box under the tv as well.

Re:My collection

[RogueyWon]

I've got a 360 on pre-order, which I'll be picking up the day it comes out. I've been a vocal defender of the X-Box and the 360 for some time. Even I have to admit that this list is not good enough. The impact of this on my own games is:

Working

BG: Dark Alliance 2, Battle Engine Aquilla, Crimson Skies, Forza, GTA3, GTA:VC, Halo, Halo 2, Jade Empire, KOTOR, KOTOR 2, Spyhunter 2.

Not working (*s indicate games whose inclusion here frankly defies belief, as they've been major titles)

Area 51, *Burnout 3*, *Burnout Revenge*, *Chronicles of Riddick*, Colin McRae 04, *Full Spectrum Warrior*, Mechassault, *Mechassault 2*, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Secret Weapons over Normandy, *SW: Republic Commando*, Wallace & Grommit.

The titles I've starred there are some of the biggest games on the X-Box. A good number of them are relatively recent releases. As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse whatsoever for them not being included. All I can say is that this will need to change by the launch date.

Re:My collection

[GizmoToy]

It occurrs to me that some of those titles may not be scheduled for backwards compatibility because they are to be release native for the 360. Burnout Revenge comes to mind, and I'm sure a Splinter Cell will make it. Perhaps Microsoft is trying to force everyone to buy the latest version (native to the 360, of course) of many of the popular series titles?

Re:My collection

[ninjakoala]

I'll disregard your slight trolling to point out how utterly pointless your post and point is.

Let's say we do things your way... I'd have around 35 devices. Oh wait, I do have around 35 devices hooked up to my tv (taking turns really). One of those is an Xbox. This is the largest console I have - only rivaled by the Neo Geo CD. Xbox 360 comes out, has a sleeker design, can stand up and generally takes up less space than the original Xbox. If this console plays the original games I can remove the original Xbox (even if I have to wave bye bye to my premium content *grrr*).

Once Revolution comes out I can wave bye bye to not one, not two but *four* consoles. That means the clutter of devices around my telly goes from 35 to 31 instead of 32 - where the Xbox would take up the same space as three of the other devices combined (NES+SNES+N64). Besides that the Revolution looks like it takes up even less space than the GameCube.

I fail to see how that is not a good thing for my situation. If I didn't have a huge stack of imports I could get rid of my Playstation, but I guess I'll have to keep that around. Once PS3 comes out the PS2 can be retired at least. Unless Sony keeps pissing on their customers (rootkits, patents to stop second hand games from working, sabotage of video cables (as on the PS2) and so on). I'd be quite happy to see fewer and fewer systems around my television while I can still play the games I have - prefereably by vendor-approved and certified emulation in hard- or software.

Re:My collection

[MrJack5304]

Well it seems like you must be a collector of sorts and I can't understand why you would love to remove all those classics from display. I myself am a collector and I must say I would never remove any of my old Nintendo systems from display. With the Xbox I guess I can see the frustration, because it is a bulky machine and the new controller and system are simply much nicer than the original. My only concern with this is about save games and such. All my saved games are on my Xbox hard drive as are most peoples. If there was no easy way to move them, there would be no way my Xbox would be dumped for just a 360.

Re:My collection

[bigman2003]

I agree with Gizmo Toy (one of my brother posts) but the one I was most disappointed in was Links 2004.

Tiger Woods...to put it frankly...sucks. When compared to Links that is. I was really hoping for a new Links, which would just absolutely seal up the likelihood of me buying an Xbox 360 on launch day.

Now, I will make an attempt to buy one on launch day...and maybe I'll get one- but probably not. I won't go through the extra effort that I would have, if it looked like a new version of Links was coming out. (I would have pre-ordered some ridiculous bundle if I had to.)

Links was a GREAT game- in fact it pushed me into buying an HDTV (at least for the 480p). If they could come out with the same game at 1080i, I would be thrilled...

(Yes, someone is going to reply, and tell me that they don't care about ME...I know, I know...)

Re:My collection

[Blakey Rat]

You bought Dragon's Lair 3D? You don't deserve backwards compatibility!

That's like complaining that the XBox 360 won't run the Xbox version of Superman. ;)

Re:My collection

[JPyun]

Wow. You have a lot of shitty games.

Re:My collection

[ninjakoala]

I agree about the save game (and premium content + Live Arcade) issue. But I honestly couldn't care less about having the games or systems on display. I'm a gamer. That's why I collect the games - not because I'm a collector. I just want to play the games they are meant to be played (even if it's under perfect emulation). Their physical manifestation mean nothing to me. In fact I'd be perfectly happy if I could log on to some sort of public terminal and have access to my entire collection of games. I care about playing games - not about showing them to the world.

Re:My collection

[ninjakoala]

I wholeheartedly agree. Links 2004 is one of the best golf games out there. I also like Everybody's Golf, but that's the classic powermeter style golf. I have a feeling we can thank EA for this...

EA: "We'll get on Live if you kill off your superior online games"
MS: "Are you nuts? They're huge for us."
EA: "We're EA"
MS: "... OK"

Microsoft did everything right with Links (their other sports titles were good too) especially the online tournament part. Well, when it ran the way it was supposed to and scores actually got registered that is ^_^

A new Links-game for Xbox with full tournament support etc. would definitely be a system seller for me.

Re:My collection

[ninjakoala]

Go on then. Put yours on display. Not just the ones you want the world to see. I dare you.

Re:My collection

[watership]

>The titles I've starred there are some of the biggest games on the X-Box. A good number of them are relatively recent releases. As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse whatsoever for them not being included.

Not all games are easily emulated. These are the titles that are emulated for now. Some were not certified, some are close, and some are probably having problems. How desperately do you want to play Wallace & Grommit at launch? I mean, if its emulated 2 months later, will you say "THE DELAY IT INEXCUSABLE!!"

They're lauching a new console worldwide with a full intergrated online network and 20 high definition games. I think this is beyond what most expected.

If they were smart

[LaughingCoder]

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.

Wow, Microsoft IS all-seeing!

[tgd]

Its like someone looked at my rack of XBox games and picked everyone one I've finished to be compatible, and every one I haven't to not be.

*tinfoil hat*

Re:Wow, Microsoft IS all-seeing!

[Kjella]

Today's logic lesson: when combined with "every one I haven't [finished] to not be [compatible]," that's exactly what it means.

I'm not sure why I was modded troll (perhaps for feeding the troll) but no, it doesn't. Every game he has bought supposedly falls into the categories "finished and compatible" or "unfinished and incompatible". At no point did he state that he had bought all the games, so there's a third category of "games never played", which may or may not be compatible. If I said "I always finish my cup of coffee" it doesn't include all cups of coffee that I haven't finished because I never drank them in the first place!

Re:Wow, Microsoft IS all-seeing!

[demongp]

Or maybe they just did some market research to find out which games are more popular than others - and decided to port those; in effect looking at everybody's Xbox games rack... :P

Emulation +

[GweeDo]

Don't forget that all your emulated Xbox games can now be ran at 720p or 1080i with full Anti-Aliasing as well. This could help a number of games look really nice. Here are some shots of Halo and Halo 2 in 720p from Bungie. It does make a very nice difference.

Re:Emulation +

[Hal_Porter]

Alta is hot and she writes vertex shaders. Hmmmm.

Sorry, what were you saying.

Re:Emulation +

[bigman2003]

I've never seen such a large collection of self-rightous poor people since the last U.N. convention. Slashdot really brings them out of the woodwork.

If you don't have an HDTV you don't get the benefits of an HDTV. For those of us with HDTVs, we are looking forward to more and more devices that support it. It seems like your post was saying; "This is not fair, I cannot afford an HDTV, and they should not be supporting things I cannot afford." Well, not all of us are poor.

I believe that Nintendo has said that their next console will max out at EDTV support. That is their decision. Microsoft has gone with HDTV, but it is also compatible with 480i. Personally, I prefer the console that will utilize the higher resolutions on my television.

I also traded in my Radio Shack FlavoRadio to get nice shiny MP3 player.

Re:Emulation +

[satoshi1]

I believe that's a Halo specific thing. I have yet to hear anything of the other games actually being upscaled like that.

Re:Emulation +

[qodfathr]

Maybe you should RTFA.

Re:Emulation +

[Richthofen80]

HDTVs are less than $500. Get a 27 inch HDTV from Samsung at http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?BV_UseBV Cookie=Yes&vertical=ELEC&pid=05747075000&subcat=Fo r+Him
Sears.

That would involve a port

[Namarrgon]

...to a completely different architecture, of every single Xbox game, with all the associated debugging, testing etc - and that's assuming they can get ahold of the source code to the third party games too (yeah, like studios are going to hand over their IP lifeblood, to Microsoft at that).

It's a lot smarter for them to write an emulator.

Re:That would involve a port

[LaughingCoder]

I think you haven't grasped exactly what I was saying. The game doesn't have to be identical - I would think the next generation of the "same" game (eg Madden 2006 for a Madden 2004 tradein) would make people very happy. The vendor could decide what the tradein was - Microsoft could "mandate" (ie subsidize) that *some* title was offered in trade for every old XBOX title (and when I say in trade I mean for a significant discount, not for free). For zealots who want the exact same gameplay, well they will just have to stick to their old XBOX because even an emulator isn't going to achieve that.

Re:That would involve a port

[ninjakoala]

Actually the certification of the games mean that they run as well or better than on the original Xbox. Better quality video output and potentially higher framerate (assuming it isn't locked in code). Besides that gameplay should be identical.

No PGR2

[GweeDo]

While there is Halo and Halo 2 support (they would have a lot of pissed users if there wasn't), there is no Project Gotham Racing 2 support. Part of me wonders if there is no support for it due to PGR3 being a launch title. Are there any other launch title sequals with no backwards compatiblity???

It wouldn't suprise me at all for Microsoft to do this for the money.

Re:No PGR2

[Flyboy Connor]

It wouldn't suprise me at all for Microsoft to do this for the money.

Micorosft doing something only for the money?

Noooooooooooooooo.

Their first big mistake

[techstar25]

Here it is. Microsofts first huge mistake. If they were only selling one version of the 360 at launch it wouldn't be a problem, but since the "CORE" package will not be backwards compatible with anything, we're are going to have a lot of unhappy people on Christmast morning when their old Xbox games don't work. This is a disaster in the making.
Now they have to market it as two different versions of the 360, the backwards compatible version and the not backwards compatible version. Considering the CORE system was to be marketed towards casual gamers, it is these same casual gamers who don't want to spend $60 a pop on brand new games on launch day.
Are they trying to make the CORE system obsolete before launch? They can't be a wise idea, especialy since price is king at Chrismas time.

Re:Their first big mistake

[sqlrob]

The core system is only there so they can say "XBox 360 is 299"

If you buy core, don't forget the memory card, which is going to drive the price close to the "enhanced" system anyway

Re:Their first big mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I agree that casual gamers will be most interested in backwards compatability, I find it rather hard to believe that someone would put down the money for a system, then not commit to at least one game. Why buy a system at all? Do you buy a DVD player then play CD's in it for a month until you find a dvd you want to watch?

Re:Their first big mistake

[Dragoon412]

Two things:

First off, why on Earth would anyone, even the most casual gamer, commit to spending the money on a brand new system to run the games he already has a system for? Buying a 360 to play old Xbox games doesn't make any sense. Anyone with half a brain will at least be waiting for one or two games to come out on the 360 that they want before they consider buying it.

Second, it's a money-making tactic. Some people don't want to spend $400 up-front. So when they buy the cheap model, and a couple months later, some game requires a HDD, that's another $100 or so in Microsoft's pocket that has a higher margin on it than the full 360 budle had. I remember seeing a price comparison before; to get a 360 Core system, then add all the additional components to it that the full Bundle had, it'd be over $500 (or something in that range). That's extra sales to report and more cash in Microsoft's pocket.

Re:Their first big mistake

[Blakey Rat]

You really think people are stupid, don't you?

Believe me, normal people research their $300 purchases before making them. Ceveat Emptor, or whatever, if they don't do their own research and buy whatever they see on the shelf, it's their own problem, not Microsoft's, not the store's.

Re:Their first big mistake

[DeadScreenSky]

I imagine they were referring to the near-mythical "clueless relative buying a console at launch for a young child" scenario. But if the kid already has Xbox1 titles, they obviously have an Xbox1. If they don't, why would this clueless relative buy them Xbox1 games? That's straining any credulity to the breaking point. It's like complaining "What if they bought the kid PS2 games for their X360?"

Re:Their first big mistake

[supermank17]

I fail to see how this is a disaster in the making. Most people buy new consoles so they can play the new games, not so they can play their old ones on the new system. They already have a system that can play the old games. What's the point of buying a new system at all if you're just going to replay Halo 2?
It may be an annoyance, yes. But a disaster, hardly.

Re:Their first big mistake

[AlexMax2742]

Here it is. Microsofts first huge mistake. If they were only selling one version of the 360 at launch it wouldn't be a problem, but since the "CORE" package will not be backwards compatible with anything, we're are going to have a lot of unhappy people on Christmast morning when their old Xbox games don't work. This is a disaster in the making.

How is this a disaster in the making? Well, maybe it will be a disaster for the parents who don't read the packaging on what they buy, but then again, this probably isn't the first dissapointment for those kids either. And it's not like it's unfixable. The dumb parents will probably feel guilty for buying something that didn't work to their kids expectations and then shell out money for hard drive, or return it for the $400 package.

Come on, guys, I know you like predicting doom and gloom for Microsoft, but at least put some effort into it.

Re:Their first big mistake

[TummyX]

I just love these "microsoft's big mistake" posts.

Why would people buy a NEW XBOX to play OLD GAMES that their OLD XBOX can already play?

Patience, grasshopper

[Namarrgon]

From the interview:

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.

Re:Patience, grasshopper

[ninjakoala]

Well, of course they get the big demanding games running first and a lot of the others will work automagically. But that's why I was expecting a much larger percentage. Well, at least there are no launch titles that are really pulling at my wallet yet and I'm far from done with my current catalogue, so 360 will have to wait. Let's hope Revolution doesn't get out before I'm ready to upgrade or I bet 360 will have to wait a while longer. Mmmm Sin & Punishment ^_^

It's probably not as easy as you make it seem though. Remember when Bleem! wanted to release a full Playstation emulator for Dreamcast? Then something like 5 discs with support for a group of games... then finally a handful of games were supported with one Bleem! disc per game. Full compatibility is a difficult thing to do, but if there's any company in the world that has the resources to do this properly, it's Microsoft.

Re:Patience, grasshopper

[gozar]

It's probably not as easy as you make it seem though. Remember when Bleem! wanted to release a full Playstation emulator for Dreamcast? Then something like 5 discs with support for a group of games... then finally a handful of games were supported with one Bleem! disc per game.

I think this had more to do with legal ramification of the emulator versus getting the game to run. This was before Sony not being able to shutdown the Mac playstation emulator, so the Bleem producers were more afraid of Sony than anything.

I still get it out everyone now and then to play a little Gran Turismo 2 on my DC... :-)

Re:Patience, grasshopper

[Namarrgon]

You may be right, but the success of a console depends on far more than launch day. They need sustained sales for years to catch up to Sony, let alone take the lead as they aim.

They've stressed more than once they're aiming for 100%, and since they've got no laurels to rest on yet, they're more likely to give it their best shot. If they say they'll do all of them & they only do half, people are going to hold it against them, no question.

Right now, backwards compatibility is a weak spot for them, and they know it (ironic, as the success of Windows is built primarily on backwards compatibility). If they can turn it around & deliver better compatibility than Sony, you can bet they'll want to do that. They have the will & they have the money. They're in it for the long term, so they have to show their commitment at every turn.

Re:Hm.

[Nogami_Saeko]

I was more curious if it would run xbox media centre :)

It's a shame that MS doesn't embrace that project - it's the only thing that would make buying a 360 worthwhile for me right now. Games are fine and all, but a media player that's constantly evolving and compatible with all major formats is an easy-sell.

Microsoft really should partner up with the XBMC folks and just offer free updates of it over xbox-live. Would generate sales from people like me. Heck, I'd probably even buy a few games for it too if I already had one.

I didn't bother buying an xbox until modchips (and more importantly, software like DVD-HD loaders, emulators and XBMC was available). Knowing console manufacturer paranoia, I'm imagining that MS will have locked-up the 360 hardware to insane levels.

Shame really, guess I'll have to wait...

N.

Re:Who cares?

[bhtooefr]

This is so that you could, oh, sell your XBox if you wanted more cash.

Or, so you could get a 360, and play (some) XBox games, even if you didn't have an old XBox.

Re:No Orta!??!?

[RealmRPGer]

Okay, to be more clear, I don't have an XBox so I was thinking of buying a 360 to get the whole shibang. But since Orta isn't supported, that's a no go. Also, I realized Munch's Oddysee isn't supported. So that's about 50% of the games I wanted to play right there. =p

I'm sure some games will appear natively

[hattig]

Especially the online games, especially MMORPGs.

Sucks to have to buy them again though, although the old XBox won't stop working it is a hassle. Sony did the right thing with backward compatibility with the PS2, and Nintendo are doing it with the Revolution.

At least Microsoft did something to get some (5%?) of the XBox games running on the XBox360. Maybe over the next year it will double or triple the number of emulatable games as the software emulator gets better.

I'd have rather that Microsoft provide a mechanism where game companies could recompile their game code and create a PowerPC executable that would utilise the same data on the game discs (games are mostly data these days anyway). There'd be a reasonable amount of porting work still however - removing custom nVidia code, utilising equivalent ATI mechanisms and so on - many companies wouldn't have bothered.

its a plus. not a "this sucks"

[CDPatten]

Until now we weren't sure that the Xbox 360 was going to support many games at all. Certainly not what model it was going to use. Now we learn that they will be making the emulators long after its release, and most likely ANY NEW XBOX game will come with a 360 emulator. This is a big plus for gamers.We should be happy to see the MODEL being used. I've seen too many 'that sucks' and complaints and it really surprises me... well... I guess its important to know the audience on this site.

The truth is it's also a blow to Sony; because recent rumblings have been they won't be 100% backwards compatible, and they already said they won't offer an XBox-Live style service.So how do you support more games after the release? Some type of system updater? In any case it won't be as familiar to people as Live is. Being able to jump on live and just download the emulator for your game is pretty easy for the end user. If any of you have seen the latest PS3 screen shot, well its pretty confusing layout (lets hope Sony changes it).

The bottom line is this a pretty good business decision for MS. They have the potential to be virtually 100% backwards compatible over time. I'm SURE they are going to crank out emulators like crazy after launch. 212 is allot, and if you look at the time-line since the 360 was finished (most likely around the time they started making the emulators), this was probably all they could get done by launch. I will take the bet that the majority of the Xbox games will be backwards compatible by Sony's PS3 launch in the US. In either case this is good news for gamers, not a "this sucks" kinda repot.

Re:its a plus. not a "this sucks"

[Hope Thelps]

They have the potential to be virtually 100% backwards compatible over time.

Yep. Endless potential. Do you work in real estate marketing?

Re:its a plus. not a "this sucks"

[gozar]

Now we learn that they will be making the emulators long after its release, and most likely ANY NEW XBOX game will come with a 360 emulator. This is a big plus for gamers.We should be happy to see the MODEL being used. I've seen too many 'that sucks' and complaints and it really surprises me... well... I guess its important to know the audience on this site.

So what incentive does the developer have to actually write a 360 game? They can just write for the XBox, following the emulator guidelines, and then have a game that will run on both the XBox and the 360.

Re:its a plus. not a "this sucks"

[thatguywhoiam]

Until now we weren't sure that the Xbox 360 was going to support many games at all. Certainly not what model it was going to use. Now we learn that they will be making the emulators long after its release, and most likely ANY NEW XBOX game will come with a 360 emulator. This is a big plus for gamers.We should be happy to see the MODEL being used. I've seen too many 'that sucks' and complaints and it really surprises me... well... I guess its important to know the audience on this site.

The truth is it's also a blow to Sony; because recent rumblings have been they won't be 100% backwards compatible, and they already said they won't offer an XBox-Live style service [gamesradar.com].So how do you support more games after the release? Some type of system updater? In any case it won't be as familiar to people as Live is. Being able to jump on live and just download the emulator for your game is pretty easy for the end user. If any of you have seen the latest PS3 screen shot [flickr.com], well its pretty confusing layout (lets hope Sony changes it).

If you think this is some kind of great thing from MS, and a blow to Sony, I think you need to put the kool aid down... The fact that there are two X360 systems, possibly three if they are crazy enough to ship some sorta HD-DVD version, with a LIST of backwards compatible games you must cross-reference by title and system version? Big, big mistake IMHO.

Besides, Live is not the be-all-end-all that many say it is. I like Live a lot, there's nothing like it out there, but its a TINY percentage of Xbox users who are on there, and not considered a great success financially. MS will be putting the screws to Live fans as the 360 rolls out (note MS's grander Services mandate?) and I want no part of that.

Sony has their fair share of mistakes, I'm not really defending them. But MS fucked up on this one. (Besides, as far as non-100% compatibility goes, it can't be a blow to Sony and a boon for MS at the same time...)

cracking prediction

[BushCheney08]

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...

Re:cracking prediction

[LordKronos]

Anything is possible depending on implementation, but the way I'd imagine doing it is as follows. When the system boots, look for a certain file on the CD. If you find that file, then copy all other files on the CD over to the hard disk. Every file would be signed with a private key and verified before copying. Not a whole lot of opportunity to slip in a bad file or some bogus code.

Re:cracking prediction

[Kjella]

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...

Since when did the 360 run unsigned code? And even if you could get some malicious code signed, do you think it'd have access to overwrite the 360's own files? They must have made many implementation mistakes for this to work the way you think it will.

Re:cracking prediction

[BushCheney08]

Jesus! I didn't say it would be easy. And of course they're gonna be doing code signing for this. However, I suspect that this will be one of the primary things to look at to get unsigned code to run. Of course, I could be totally wrong and MS will have done their job properly and nobody will ever get arbitrary code to run on the 360.

Don't understand what the problem is here.

[sixpacker]

If you own a XBOX game, that usually means you own a XBOX. If you want XBOX360, go buy it. But if you want to play your old XBOX game, play it with your old XBOX.
Secondly, most game publishers will release XBOX360 version of their "still selling" existing titles.

I'm not even sure we ever need an emulator here although it's definitely a good thing.

Re:Don't understand what the problem is here.

[eclipser13]

Sometimes it's not a matter of the games you already own. I'll use myself as an example.

Back when I had the choice between N64 and Playstation, I chose the N64. Then three years later, I had the choice between the GC, the PS2, and the Xbox. Since I didn't have a PS1, the PS2 was an extremely attractive option for me. Not only would I have the PS2 titles available at launch, I could go out and splurge on a huge number of PS1 classic "must-haves" that were selling for 10 bucks each.

With the current launch of the 360, that list of cheap, classic xbox games that I can play right now is a lot smaller than I was hoping it would be. I might as well just wait and make sure that all of the games that I will want to play are made backwards compatible before buying. (There might even be a price drop on the console by the time that happens)

chipping

[jlebrech]

I'm chipping my old xbox first, gettin used to evolutionx till ps3 comes then compare both nextgen machines, if i cant see much difference in both ill get a new nvidia card for my pc. but i will probably get the xbox 360, altho its ms it probably will be less drm'd than the ps3.

Re:Dreamcast 360: Keep Lowering Your Expectations

[Crouchy]

Point 10).. Just to prove it is not just the XBox 360 with bad PR which sreams "We are clueless and lame", does this marketing really persuade anyone to upgrade to the latest Microsoft office http://www.microsoft.com/office/evolve/default.msp x?

Re:Emulation

[BushCheney08]

Now that's a brilliant move. Let's see. Original xbox titles are more or less running on x86 hardware. The "emulated" versions (emulated is in quotes becuase I suspect it's not emulation at all, but rather recompiled PPC native binaries using the original game's assets) will be running on PPC hardware. Now let's take those PPC versions and port them over to x86 hardware. Like I said, utterly brilliant!

They can't offer Hardware emulation.

[Dixie Flatliner]

The first Xbox was an nvidia chip, the new one is ATi - some games contain hardware specific optimizations, and nVidia refused to license them to emulate their hardware, for anyone that actually read up on the issue.

Re:They can't offer Hardware emulation.

[-kertrats-]

I don't think the nVidia/ATI switch is nearly as bothersome as the Intel/PowerPC switch.

Re:They can't offer Hardware emulation.

[Dixie Flatliner]

From a technology standpoint I agree, however Microsoft is on, how shall we say, firm legal cooperative ground with Intel.

Re:They can't offer Hardware emulation.

[xmodem_and_rommon]

Multi-threaded games are not really out there

If this is true, how is it possible for more than one bot to move at once? Games have to use multi-threading to a certain extent, otherwise you couldnt have much of a game.

I don't think you could even make a pac-man game without using multi-threading.

Emulation appears 1) partial, 2) enabled online

[Morgaine]

I'm pleasently surprised at the number of games already available.

Actually, there is a very interesting point behind the fact that *NOT ALL* Xbox games are immediately runnable on the 360's emulator. There are two issues here.

- Firstly, if not all Xbox games run under the emulator, this clearly implies that the Xbox emulation is incomplete. If it were complete, then any Xbox title wouldn't even know that it's running under emulation, and all games would run by default. So, it's not complete, currently.

- Secondly, since the interview says that the emulator can be downloaded for burning to CD and loading into the 360 from media, this means that the emulator is pretty much fixed. Since the set of compatible games is most definitely not fixed, but growing all the time, this implies that the Xbox 360 must be connected online for it to validate that a particular game is compatible.

In other words, Microsoft seems to be identifying "compatibility" with "authorization by us" for a game to run on the 360 console. I guess it's what one would expect, given their desire for control, although it certainly isn't helpful to players who own minority-interest games.

Re:Emulation appears 1) partial, 2) enabled online

[PhoenixFlare]

In other words, Microsoft seems to be identifying "compatibility" with "authorization by us" for a game to run on the 360 console. I guess it's what one would expect, given their desire for control, although it certainly isn't helpful to players who own minority-interest games.

Yeah, this seems unecessarily limited to me too - at the very least, seems like a choice to tell the system "Try and run this game, I understand that it's not Microsoft's fault if it doesn't work. *insert massive legal disclaimer here*" would be better than locking people out of games that could very well work immediately.

Re:Emulation appears 1) partial, 2) enabled online

[BushCheney08]

...since the interview says that the emulator can be downloaded for burning to CD...

If you read the responses carefully, you'll notice that there are several mentions to emulators (note the plural), indicating (to me at least) that each "certified" game will require an emulator. This further leads me to believe that they're playing loose with the word "emulator" and in fact are talking about recompiled PPC specific binaries, which use the original game's assets. Besides, wasn't that the point of having everyone use their DirectX dev kits? So that the code was abstracted and could fairly easily be recompiled for a different target if necessary? Well, it seems like it became necessary...

Re:Emulation appears 1) partial, 2) enabled online

[king-manic]

Actually, there is a very interesting point behind the fact that *NOT ALL* Xbox games are immediately runnable on the 360's emulator. There are two issues here.

- Firstly, if not all Xbox games run under the emulator, this clearly implies that the Xbox emulation is incomplete. If it were complete, then any Xbox title wouldn't even know that it's running under emulation, and all games would run by default. So, it's not complete, currently.

- Secondly, since the interview says that the emulator can be downloaded for burning to CD and loading into the 360 from media, this means that the emulator is pretty much fixed. Since the set of compatible games is most definitely not fixed, but growing all the time, this implies that the Xbox 360 must be connected online for it to validate that a particular game is compatible.

In other words, Microsoft seems to be identifying "compatibility" with "authorization by us" for a game to run on the 360 console. I guess it's what one would expect, given their desire for control, although it certainly isn't helpful to players who own

I'm actually guessing from the information they have provided that they aren't atcually emulating anything. Instead their recompiling the code for these games with the 360 libraries istead of the Xbox libraries. With equivilent calls. This would circumvent Nvidias IP concerning graphics calls and would also allow things like higher resolutiosn ect.. the draw back is it's labour intensive and games have to be done one at a time. There is enough evidence to suggest this is what their doing.

We wont' know until someone takes a closer look but this is my guess.

Re:Emulation appears 1) partial, 2) enabled online

[Babbster]

Not at all. One of the big draws to game consoles is that (in theory) "they just work." You stick a game in and it starts right up - no fiddling with software settings or hardware configurations. If Microsoft opened things up as you described while knowing that a large number of Xbox games won't work at all, they'd be setting themselves up for a support/return nightmare from people who get an hour into their unlisted Xbox game of choice and the game crashes the system. In addition, locking unlisted games out allows them to have more control of their console as a whole, so that the hackers out there have a harder time modifying their boxes - every crash would be a potential opportunity for a modder to work some of that voodoo they do.

BLAH!

[Spy der Mann]

They could've just included an XBOX subsystem inside the 360, just like the Commodore 128 had a C64 subsystem. 99.9% compatibility guaranteed. And didn't the SNES have (to be bought separately) a NES adapter? Didn't the PS2 play PS1 games? Can't the Gamecube play GBA games?

Frankly I can't understand why the decision of software emulation. But well, this is Microsoft.

Re:BLAH!

[bigman2003]

Through the high-tech magic of my television, I have devised a scheme that will allow me to be 100% compatible with all Xbox titles.

My TV has 3 (3!) available component sources. So I can just KEEP my Xbox, get a 360, and have my cable box all plugged in at the same time.

With the click of the 'source' button on my TV remote, I can switch between the systems at will.

Yes...this is the way backwards compatibility should be done.

Re:BLAH!

[damiam]

The PS2 has basically a PS1-on-a-chip inside it, and the GBA has a whole seperate Z80 processor for running Game Boy games (no, the Cube doesn't run GBA games). It would be difficult for MS to put an XBox subsystem inside the 360; they'd have to stick in a Celeron and an nVidia card at the very least. That'd probably add $100 to the cost and make the system twice as bulky.

Re:BLAH!

[glesga_kiss]

Incidentally, so did the Game Gear - you could play console (Master System) games on your portable (Game Gear) - sort of like the Game Boy Player in reverse.

The Game Gear was a portable Master System, it was the same innards. It's not emulation or backwards compatibility; the adaptor was simply to put the different sized cartridges into the portable.

Re:BLAH!

[SScorpio]

Actually Nintendo did make a GBA emulator for the Gamecube. There have been several Gamecube demo disks at the kiosks in stores that contain demos of GBA games that you play on the Gamecube. Unless there was some wierd hardware add-on hidden in the cabinet, and ignoring the point that the Gamecube is more than powerful enough. You are correct that the GBPLayer was the actual GBA hardware in a different form factor and with different interfaces though.

Re:BLAH!

[NanoGator]

"They could've just included an XBOX subsystem inside the 360, just like the Commodore 128 had a C64 subsystem."

And add even more to the cost + having to buy chips from both NVida and ATI? Heh. There's a brilliant move.

"And didn't the SNES have (to be bought separately) a NES adapter?"

No.

"Can't the Gamecube play GBA games?"

No.

"Frankly I can't understand why the decision of software emulation. But well, this is Microsoft."

Cost and practicality.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to sources from various dictionary publishers, the English word "lose" has only one letter "O".
Slashdotters worldwide are dumbfounded with the latest development.

Said one gentleman, under the condition of anonymity, "OMFG!!! R U joking??? ROFL!!!!!!1111oneone"

This announcement comes hot on the heels of recent news that "kernel" has no letter "A"

Not a big deal....

[3vi1]

I see a bunch of people here freaking out that most of their games are not on the list, so I wanted to throw some thoughts out:

Is someone going to come into your house and smash your old XBox as soon as you buy the 360? I know, I know: some people might be doing a trade in, where you give them a perfectly good XBox and they give you a pitance.

From Microsoft's perspective, backwards compatibility is not primarily so that you can still play your old games. Backwards compatibility is to give Microsoft a larger set of working titles at launch, where they can still sell a few of those games to people who never owned an XBox.

If a software producer is already releasing a "new" 360 version of your old game, don't expect Microsoft to spend a lot of time right now making the old version compatible - because that does nothing to bring in revenue.

So, if you own unsupported games, keep the old XBox for now. Eventually, Microsoft might have *every* XBox title emulated properly, simply to be able to say they have x-thousand working titles on the 360.

How about Vista/Media Center?

[grahamtriggs]

Pretty incredible that they've managed to miss just about every important game. Sure, having Halo, etc. working may be a popular move, but it's only temporary - Halo 3, PGR 3, Ghost Recon 3, DOA4, etc. are all due for X360 sequels anyway.

What about the important Xbox exclusives - Jet Set Radio, Outrun 2, Panzer Dragoon, etc. - games that aren't likely to make an appearance on the X360 (at least any time soon)?

OK, the different architectures make things difficult, but in that case, why not put Xbox compatability into Vista, and/or Media Center (if your PC is fast enough)? Making an x86 Windows box run Xbox games is far less of a technical challenge, and the hardware is more than up to the job now. It's not as nice a solution as proper X360 compatability, but it would be a good selling point and of benefit to many people.

They should have just made an A/V pass-thru

[LordNimon]

Instead of wasting time with backwards compatibility that apparently isn't good enough, MS should have just made an audio/video cable pass-thru connector on the Xbox 360. That way, you connect your Xbox to your 360, and whenever the Xbox is on, the 360 will just pass the audio and video signal through itself and on to your A/V equipment.

Fortunately for me, I don't need to do this, as my receiver has enough switchable A/V inputs for both my Xbox and a new Xbox 360.

Some company needs to invent a box that can do this. This box would take the A/V signal from both the Xbox and an Xbox 360, and then it would automatically switch between the two. The output would be whatever the Xbox 360 normally outputs, so you could use any Xbox 360 A/V cables you wanted.

Re:They should have just made an A/V pass-thru

[makomk]

What, doesn't the US have an equivalent to this then?

Re:They should have just made an A/V pass-thru

[beerman2k]

Yes, of course we have swich boxes. I was just at Fry's (a huge electronics store) a couple of weeks ago and they had half a dozen switches from el cheepo to high def compat. I think the problem is that some people, never leave they're parent's basement so they don't really know what's out there... :)

Re:No Orta!??!?

[bigman2003]

Both of those games are at least 3 years old. If those truly are the only games you are interested in, it seems to make sense to just buy a used Xbox.

In fact, I'll sell you mine (on November 22nd) for about $50.

WHO CARES about backwards compatibility, when...

[SenorCitizen]

...you can keep your old Xbox? I mean, turn it into a real entertainment centre -- mod it, run Xbox Media Center, arcade games and old console games under emulation on it, along with the Xbox games you care for. I'll never let go of mine, no matter which (if any) next-gen console I buy.

Re:Who cares?

[basscomm]

I care. I care lots. I tend to keep my old systems because for a long time there was no such thing as backwards compatibility. I just can't bear to think of throwing out hundreds of dollars of software, especially if they still provide me with some occasional enjoyment. Backwards compatibility means that I can still give the old games a spin on occasion while at the same time keep the number of electronic devices on my already overcrowded entertainment unit down to a manageable number.

Ehhh... Not bad....

[dr.banes]

Not a bad list considering all the differences between the hardware. Its still missing quite a bit of high profile games. I guess they're working on it.

Re:No Orta!??!?

[Hope Thelps]

Both of those games are at least 3 years old. If those truly are the only games you are interested in, it seems to make sense to just buy a used Xbox.

He implied that there are four games that he would like to CONTINUE to play from the Xbox. Why would that imply that he doesn't want to play new games? There seem to be a number of people (possibly including you) who don't care if they can't continue playing ANY of the older games. Can we conclude that they wouldn't want to play new games either?

Re:No Orta!??!?

[Hope Thelps]

He implied that there are four games that he would like to CONTINUE to play from the Xbox.

Apologies, I misremembered in that he was looking for a box that would include the games - he can't play them at present. I still don't understand why you think that the 3 year age of those games would be relevant.

Re:Hm.

[anti-human 1]

Microsoft will embrace the XBMC project just fine after they sue the project for trademark infringement over the XBOX name, and then release their own Xbox Media Center(TM). Its how MS does business.

If you didn't already read about the Windows Defender thing: look no further.

What about the accessories?

[BumpyCarrot]

Hooray, I'll be able to play my favourite games on the 360. But what about my goddamned controllers? I'm not particularly enthused over the idea of buying another 3 controllers (at least one of which will be wireless, unless the 360 is happy with hubs) so I can play some 2v2 Slayer.

xbox pc emulator

[Sark666]

From what i understand with most emulators, it takes roughly 5-10 times the processing power to emulate one piece of hardware on another. but i remember reading years ago that since the xbox was basically a pc, that 1:1 emulation should be possible and not require a 6 ghz pc to run games at full speed. i haven't looked for awhile but was curious as to how this statement was flawed.

Re:xbox pc emulator

[TomHandy]

I'm curious about this one as well; I've never completely understood what the technical limitation is that would keep someone from creating some sort of Xbox emulator for modern PC's that would let you just stick in an xbox game and play it.

Re:xbox pc emulator

[webzone]

Aren't console games protected by DRM or something like that? You can't just put an XBOX game in your computer. It probably has an encyption technology similar to DVDs...

Re:xbox pc emulator

[king-manic]

From what i understand with most emulators, it takes roughly 5-10 times the processing power to emulate one piece of hardware on another. but i remember reading years ago that since the xbox was basically a pc, that 1:1 emulation should be possible and not require a 6 ghz pc to run games at full speed. i haven't looked for awhile but was curious as to how this statement was flawed.

From the looks of it, it may not be true emulation, it might simply be a new binary of the game recompiled for the new system.

Re:xbox pc emulator

[Neopoleon]

"From the looks of it, it may not be true emulation, it might simply be a new binary of the game recompiled for the new system."

It's emulation.

1) If you were you recompile the games, you'd have to release new media - this is supposed to work by sticking your original Xbox CDs in the drive and go

2) It says in the associated article that it's a software emulator

Re:xbox pc emulator

[Neopoleon]

"From what i understand with most emulators, it takes roughly 5-10 times the processing power to emulate one piece of hardware on another. but i remember reading years ago that since the xbox was basically a pc, that 1:1 emulation should be possible and not require a 6 ghz pc to run games at full speed."

You have to keep in mind that the Xbox 360 is much closer to being a Mac rather than a PC, so it isn't as simple as it sounds.

However, from what few technical details were given in the associated article, it sounds like the emulation is taking place in part at the API level, which is to say that they're wrapping calls to the 360 to make them look like calls to the original Xbox. This is a total guess, though, since they really didn't give us a lot to go on in the interview.

If that's the case, though, then it's a sort of hybrid emulator - not so much replacing the hardware as much as adding a compatability layer to the software that handles calls from the games to the machine.

Again, though, this is just total shot-in-the-dark guessing.

"i haven't looked for awhile but was curious as to how this statement was flawed."

If we were talking about a game that was being released for the Xbox (original) and the PC, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. I forget what the exact details are, but from what I've read, the Xbox has its own custom version of DirectX, which means that it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to port games that used DirectX on the PC.

I think a lot of the difficulties would be in dealing with the different interfaces (mice/keyboards vs. controllers) and environments (TVs vs. monitors, etc.).

But, and just to make it absolutely clear, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about :)

Re:xbox pc emulator

[king-manic]

It's emulation.

1) If you were you recompile the games, you'd have to release new media - this is supposed to work by sticking your original Xbox CDs in the drive and go

2) It says in the associated article that it's a software emulator

However only a handful of game are initially supported. You need a HD to make it work and live/internet to get the updates on the "emulator". As well the 360 isn't powerful enough by traditional Emulator standards and the architecture is widly different. I think it's not really software emulation but is instead a mix of recompilations and a software abstraction layer. Thats is why only select games are emulated and you have to download updates.

Re:No Orta!??!?

[bigman2003]

My question is: If you are only interested in three year old games, then why bother getting a new Xbox? Buy the older one which WILL run those games. Keep it, enjoy it...then in 4 years buy a 360 (again, for about $50) and play those games.

The only ones who should be stupid enough to buy a console in its first year of existance (I put myself into this stupid category) should be:

- People who don't own ANY console, and are just getting into it.
- People who want what is NEW and can't stand to wait a year

When the console has been on the market for two years, you have a much bigger library of games. The older games are much cheaper, the console will be cheaper, the peripherals will be cheaper.

You'll know which games are good- which aren't...without having to deal with launch hype.

Really...if he is only interested in 3 year old games, then why bother spending $400 on a new console? Spending $50 on an old console, and $30 bucks on two games would make him happier.

Soo...

[shoptroll]

Isn't the HDD only standard on the non-core system? Also, how big are the emulators going to be? The XBox HDD is only 20 gb right? Is this going to conflict with everything else on your drive?

A lot of fun was poked at Nintendo over the entry cost of FF:CC I don't see why this is any different. To some degree this might be worse?

Re:Soo...

[Station]

Yeah HDD is only standard on the premium system, and you can buy a HDD later for the core system if you want. I don't understand why you are annoyed about the HDD size though, since the entire thing is used primarily as a cache (a la the Xbox) and a way to store all your dl'ed content. As far as I can tell, most people will buy the premium system anyway, and the core will be sold to newbies/parents for their small children who will later grow up and get a HDD and who prolly don't have an xbox anyway. 20 gigs is plenty of space, and using a smaller drive keeps the price down.

Re:Soo...

[shoptroll]

Well if you can use the system as a media center (which I'm pretty sure MS intends it to be), 20 gb isn't going to be a whole lot. I was just curious as to whether or not the size of game-specific emulators, dl content, etc. would be a major competitor to the media center capabilities.

Re:Soo...

[Neopoleon]

"Also, how big are the emulators going to be?"

There's only one emulator, and according to the associated article, it's going to be about 5MB, so not a space hog.

Can you say...

[rAiNsT0rm]

Another hastily thrown together crap box of hype? Well... at least I can.

Why do you want backward compatability?

[applecrumble]

Could anyone explain to me why backward compatability on a console is such a big deal? We didn't have it, for example, for the NES->SNES->Nintendo 64->Gamecube transitions and nobody really minded. If you already own XBOX games, you've already got a XBOX to play them on. I can't imagine many people want to buy old XBOX games for their brand new XBOX360 either. OK, some people might want to get the better known games (e.g. HALO) but it really isn't worth the hassle of backwards compatibility in my opinion. Isn't one of the advantages of consoles is that they have hardware that is more appropriate to pure gaming because they aren't constrained by ten years worth of old architecture (i.e. like the PC is)?

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[EoinOL]

Lots of points to get through: - The only reason the SNES wasn't backwards compatible with the NES was that a cost-effective way couldn't be found. Nintendo wanted it to happen. - Ceople did mind. Sure, the more dedicated gamers didn't, but most people don't want big huge piles of consoles connected to their TVs, and some of the people who wouldn't mind do have partners who would. For many, two consoles under the TV is the limit, and pushing it at that. - Consoles break. Yes, I have an Xbox. I have an Xbox now. Will I have an Xbox in two years? Three? There's no guarantee that the disc drive and hard drive will last as long as I want them to. Which am I going to prefer - having a shiny new 360 for 360 games and spluttering, dying Xbox for Xbox games, or one console that does both? - I don't know how many people buy older games for their new consoles, but giving them the option of doing so is surely better than not. - Backwards compatibility can improve old games. Look at the 360 - generic effort at achieving 720p in every Xbox game. It won't be a vast improvement, but it will make things better. Loading time should also improve. - There is no old architecture in the 360. It is not in any way "constrained". It is exactly the same machine as it would be if there were no backwards compatibility.

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[tukkayoot]

It's an advantage because you can get rid of clutter in your house by getting rid of one console if another offers complete or near-complete emulation of the old. This may not be a huge deal for most of us the States, but Japan is a pretty big video gaming market too, and space is at a premium there. Even living in rural Florida, though, it's a convenience to not have to find a place/power outlet for my old consoles (or to have to deal with the tangle of cables that exists in and around my TV space).

Also, the price on older games tends to go down after a while. You can eventually get the best games for under $20 each, or sometimes for as little as $10ish. While they may not sport the most cutting edge graphics, they still are fun to play and may be a better value than the majority of $50 (or now, $60) titles available for the new system. If you didn't own the previous generation console, this can be an important selling point, especially early in the life of the next-gen console, when your selection of quality titles is very small.

You can sell your own system, which, granted, you may not get a ton of money for if a shiny, new backwards compatible system has just been released by the same company, but you'll still probably get enough for at least one shiny new cutting edge game (except perhaps in the case of the GameCube, which is so inexpensive already that I have a hard time imagining someone getting more than $50 for it on eBay, particularly after the Revolution comes.

So backwards compatability may not be something that makes someone decide that they definitely aren't going to buy the system, it is a great bonus feature that will make the decision to buy easier.

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[RexRhino]

Because not everyone has the space to keep all their old consoles hooked up to their TV. And, the old xbox looked like crap, and stood out like an ugly sore thunb in my living room

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[shidoshi]

My Genesis was backward compatible with my Master System games through an adapter. My SNES, to throw off your example, was backward compatible with my NES games through an adapter.

The main reason why I want backward compatibility on the 360 is that Xbox Live makes games not lose their shelf life. I'm a big fan of King of Fighters, and I can now play 2002 and 2003 online with other people who also like the game. For me, that game isn't the type where you beat it, you're done, and then it either sits there or you sell it. That game isn't going to be released on the 360, so it is quite likely that some would want to pick it up for their 360, even if it is an "old" Xbox game.

Sure, I have an Xbox. But I'm not like some people on here who are perfectly content with a bunch of hardware, cables, and whatnot being strewn all around my home. I don't want twenty different consoles under my television. When I get a 360, I want to have one console, not two, yet still be able to play the older games that still have value.

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[dave1g]

An often cited advantage of the PS2 goign into the last round was its backwards compatibility. While yes you could always keep both consoles hooked up there is a space and easy of use advantage to only keeping one, plus the possibility of ebaying or pawning off the old console to help pay for a new game.

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[StillAnonymous]

I agree with you. Backwards compatibility isn't that important, but when you stick the word "XBOX" in the system's title, you're going to mislead people.

They should have just called it something else.

Re:Why do you want backward compatability?

[cjb110]

Simple, Sony has it...and Sony made a lot more PS2 sales because of it. Cynics would say that is actually the only reason for its success, given that technically its a POS compared to the other 2.

Re:BLAH! (What's up with EBay?)

[timeOday]

One problem with just keeping the old XBox is it costs you money, compared to selling it if the 360 were a direct replacement.

I was going to check the market value of the XBox, but when I search for "XBox" ebay changes my search and says "1496 items found for Microsoft Xbox 360 - Game console"... no original XBox results come up at all, just zillions and zillions of identical auctions for 360's. At the bottom of each page is a long list of "reviews" (for the as-yet nonexistent product) that are mostly shills. The only vaguely negative comment any of them made was that supplies were going to be limited, so act now!!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:No Orta!??!?

[dindi]

I don't agree, I am sure ther is a bunch of us who just want a higher quality (resolution wise), and have a projector or a nice HDTV, and are sick of 480i/p when they can display 800x600 and higher.....

It is pretty sad to see my PC pumping 1024x768+ resolutions while i'm doomed with both consoles to 480p....

I only have a 800x600 device, but it is pretty sad sometimes to look at a 180cm (6ft) wide screen in 640x480 ....

So I would be actually happier to be able to pop-in all my games into the 360 until many new ones come out, would be able to get rid of my old xbox that takes up space and a bunch of connections on my amp......

I also read somewhere, that rendering will be altered for old games, and while textures won't be nicer, they will be rendered in higher res -> I don't know if it is true though, but if it is, I would be really happy to have the games I like play on the 360...

And there is a lot missing from that list, including farcry, battlefront, midnight club -> good multiplayer games I would be happy to continue playing without the bulky black box and the extra kilometer ot UTP,audio and video cables (incl the high definition pack that is a bit bigger than normal)

By the way PS3 will support all your games as far as I know, but dunno if I am really interested about that, as I didn't touch my ps2 for months since I am sick of loading times ruining gameplay ... my lens are probably crapping out too as well and read errors plague some games ....

nah just a note :)

Re:BLAH! (What's up with EBay?)

[bigman2003]

Wow...what version of eBay are you going to?

When I did the same search, it brought me to a page that basically listed both systems. I clicked on the older Xbox picture, and it brought me to this page.

Starcraft: Ghost

[jabberwocky_rt]

Not that its ever coming out...

but if it were, this certainly will make its success a lil more difficult, what with being designed for xbox 1 and all...

(offtopic: perhaps blizzard's "don't release till its perfect' philosophy has finally backfired on them?)

Re:BLAH! (What's up with EBay?)

[timeOday]

My bad, apparently.

Anyways, it looks like the Original XBox is worth a little over $100. It would be nice if compatibility were good enough to sell the old XBox and use it towards the new one.

Speculation time

[jmorris42]

Ok, maybe I'm just daft. But am I the only one who is looking at this per title 'emulation file' and thinking it isn't anything of the sort? How much do you want to bet they plan to emulate the non-critical code, which is possible with the hardware available, but have that emulator somehow merge in custom recompiled/ported code for the time critical bits? Because face it folks, the CPU cycles available to them just ain't there to fully emulate a P733 in software. If so you can pretty much forget any titles from companies that have managed to get on Microsoft's shit list since they released. And any that pushed the hardware to the limit but weren't big financial successes. Sure they would invest whatever effort were required to get Halo running, even if it were basically recompiling the whole set of binaries, but how much effort will go into obscure games?

And of course any new X-Box titles will ship with any needed rebuilt bits for X-Box 360.

All in all, if they get the list of supported titles up a lot more AND these games actually work close to the same their decision to go with a totally new hardware platform will be vindicated. But that is a lot of IF.

Re:Speculation time

[Neopoleon]

"Because face it folks, the CPU cycles available to them just ain't there to fully emulate a P733 in software."

They don't actually need to emulate a PIII.

One thing that Microsoft is good at (and I'm biased because I work for 'em) is creating nice dev tools.

APIs like DirectX (us) and OpenGL (the other white meat) were made for this kind of scenario. If you think about it, nearly any PC game would have to be "ported" from system to system because of differing hardware (sound and video cards, etc.). Having these APIs completely changes anything since they sit between the games and the hardware, basically making ATI and NVidia (and all those other companies) cards look the same to the developers.

Because of DirectX, you and I could potentially choose from the same catalog of games for PCs even though we have boxes manufactured with components from many different vendors.

Take this over to the 360 - Like I said, MS is good at dev tools. I might as well add that, whatever the response might typically be on /., we're also pretty damned good at ensuring backward compatability (we kept DOS and 16 bit Windows APIs alive for quite a while, and we're keeping the Win32 bits kicking in Vista).

To get around the problem of trying to emulate an entire CPU, I'm expecting to see a compatability layer that will make the 360 appear in some ways like an Xbox - a sort of DirectX (Xbox) to XNA (360) layer.

If you can just replace calls, then you don't have to try to emulate the hardware (WINE works in a similar way - it's not an attempt to emulate Windows, but actually an attempt to recreate the Windows APIs).

Of course, as you pointed out, we're probably going to see a mix of methods used to create the emulation, but whatever it is, it *is* working :)

Also, I have no idea what I'm talking about, so ignore me. I'm probably just adding to the noise, but I'm curious about all of this as well...

"Sure they would invest whatever effort were required to get Halo running, even if it were basically recompiling the whole set of binaries, but how much effort will go into obscure games?"

From the article I read (linked to from the /. post), it doesn't sound like they're pushing new binaries down to the machines. It's just a 5MB emulator that works for the entire list of games.

One of the reasons you're not seeing a longer list yet is that the team is verifying each game by hand before it gets added. This could obviously take a while, and we're (hopefully) going to see more games added to the list.

Whatever happens, though, this is a good thing. I didn't expect to see backward compatability since it's definitely *not* typically part of the package with consoles. The PS2 managed, but it was the exception to the rule.

Maybe Sony changed the scene for everybody, though - maybe emulation will be standard on major consoles from here on out.

Which would be cool. I'd like to think the Revolution will still play my GC games...

I think you're mistaken...

[YesIAmAScript]

You can run the games at higher screen resolutions. But in most games the textures and models aren't any higher rez than before. So it's like running Half-Life (not 2) in 1600x1200 on your PC. It doesn't look significantly better than it did at 800x600, because although the screen is high res, the only thing that gets sharper is the edges, the textures don't look any better, and the models are still low poly count. It is very similar to uprezzing a DVD.

I believe they updated the collateral (textures and perhaps character models) on Halo/Halo 2 so they would look better. They probably took the collateral from the PC versions of these games.

I hope they update the collateral on Forza Motorsport. That game already suffered from low-res (non-car) textures, and it only supported 480p.

Also note Xbox 1 supposedly was HDTV compatible, but most games couldn't use it due to memory or performance limitations.

similar software run XBOX games on PS3 or Revoluti

[kevn]

Since this is all done in software, couldnt similar emulation be developed to run XBOX games on the PS3 or Nintendo's Revolution? For that matter, why not develope software to run PS2 games on the XBOX 360 too?

Re:WHO CARES about backwards compatibility, when..

[ctishman]

Sorry, disc dirty or damaged.

CPU emulators are easy!

[kylef]

I don't think the nVidia/ATI switch is nearly as bothersome as the Intel/PowerPC switch.

This is hilarious. Have you ever written a GPU emulator before? Then you have no idea what's involved.

CPU emulators are EASY. Think about how many CPU emulators there are on the market: Virtual PC, VMWare, Fusion (Mac 68k), etc. Hell, I had to write a MIPS emulator as a solo project in a college-level computer engineering class. The main reason they're so easy is that the CPU instruction sets are well-studied and well-documented.

Re:CPU emulators are easy!

[-kertrats-]

The reason I assumed that (I have no experience in the field) is that games routinely perform identically on nVidia and ATI cards, yet almost none manage to make it over to other processors. I personally would assume that if the project is as simple as you claim it to be, it would be worth the handful of manhours in return for the extra income a Mac port would make.

Doesn't happen with Free Software

[CarpetShark]

With Free Software, you can port apps to new systems. Proprietary software and systems, or own your rights. Choose.

Re:Doesn't happen with Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Tux Racer! Woo-freaking-hoo!

Finalized = Not really?

[eagl]

If an emulator must be specifically coded for every title, it doesn't sound backwards compatible at all. It's a bit like calling a wintel box "commodore 64 backwards compatible" since you can code an emulator, but worse since each game needs separate work and a piece of non-standard hardware (the optional hard drive) to work at all.

A serious question

[Kingrames]

Will those games which are not compatible be re-released?

if it doesn't run bloodrayne, I ain't gonna bother.

Wrong message for the console market

[SuperKendall]

It seems to me that for a lot of people that buy consoles, this whole "Wait, trust use, we'll haev them all done someday" is a little too much like the Sony PSP promise of "buy the system now, we'll have great games at some undetermined date in teh future!".

In short, the console market does not take kindly to any marketing message that embodies the word "Patience".

Yes...

[SuperKendall]

Ever heard of digital signatures?

Ever heard of buffer overflows in crypto handling software or update mechanisms?

Not understanding the market

[SuperKendall]

I don't own an XBox. Having the 360 run some of the games I would have liked to play on the XBox but never was enough to make me buy one might just be enough to get me to buy the 360.

As an example I never had a PSX, but I bought the PS2 partially because there were a few games I really wanted to try from the PSX days and it supported them.

What about the rest of the market

[SuperKendall]

I see a bunch of people here freaking out that most of their games are not on the list, so I wanted to throw some thoughts out: Is someone going to come into your house and smash your old XBox as soon as you buy the 360? ...

Well that would be impossible saince I don't have one. But the more old games the 360 runs the more tempting it is for me to buy. The combination of older XBox games and newer 360 games might be apealing enough for me to get a system (not at the moment though).

Personally I am waiting to see how Microsoft plays the whole HD-DVD angle; I am sure there will be a 260 with HD-DVD support (to appease the larger game makers like EA that would rather consoles have simialr space requirements) and I see no reason to buy one now and again ins six months.

Re:What about the rest of the market

[3vi1]

I somehow doubt there are a lot of people that won't buy a 360 just because it doesn't support an older XBox game that they don't already own.

If they want to play that particular game so bad, they could still buy an XBox, instead of an XBox 360. Something tells me there will be a ton of "previously owned" XBox systems at bargain basement prices very soon.

Desert info

[SuperKendall]

More Info on the desert launch.

Watch out for slightly sandy 360's on eBay shortly after launch! Hell on electronics.

Personally, I don't think the parent post deserved to be modded as "Troll".

Re:BLAH! (What's up with EBay?)

[teh*fink]

One problem with just keeping the old XBox is it costs you money, compared to selling it if the 360 were a direct replacement.

unless you have xbox live and have to keep paying for it, i'm not really sure how "just keeping the old xbox" costs you money. it's a one time investment. that's it. do you have to take yours in for repairs all the time or what?

Re:Emulation

[badboy_tw2002]

Hey cool, wild speculation! I'm actually thinking its going to be a giant rack of xboxes that take input from the controller and download the video stream from Xbox Live! That's just as plausible!!! For one, there's a wide variety of games on that list from a wide variety of publishers and developers. Independent developers do not give their game code to anyone, especially not their publishers. Where are they compiling these binaries from? Second, the executables (plus patches!) can run from 4-8 MB per game. They're putting this thing on an ordinary CD. You do the math. Third, could they really keep it a secret if there was a whole "redo your code" movement going on throughout the industry. Shit like that leaks. Lastly, "using the orignal games assets"...uh, you do realize that there's no standard way of doing assets in a game. Therefore you would once again need the game teams' help to put the project together. Again, not happening. And if they were going to all that trouble, why not change the code to write to a memcard instead of a harddrive, so people with the Core system could do it???

Windows

[Peter Bonte]

Well, you get a multitude of games at launch and most gamers can't keep all there old consoles connected but definitely want to play the games. Compatibility is very important as previous consoles have learned the hard way, imagine Windows to be not backwards compatible with the option to just restart in a previous version. :P

Not compatible :
- Nintendo
- Sega
- xbox
- all others ..

Compatible :
- PC
- Playstation
- Gameboy

Re:Windows

[Bustbang]

Add The sega genesis and atari 7800 to the backward compatibility list.
The genesis can play master system games, the 7800 can play atari 2600 games.

Emulator not included w/ 360?

[fbg111]

What Im really proud to tell you and your readers is that its easy to get the emulation software, and its free. Well give gamers a choiceyou can get the latest software updates from Xbox Live, burn a CD from xbox.com or sign up on Xbox.com for a CD that can be delivered to your home at a nominal shipping and handling fee. Once you get the CD, put it in your Xbox 360 and youre ready to go.

Why not just include the emulator w/ the 360, or at least on the hdd version?

No Madden!!?

[somenice]

His babbling aside, or turned off if you like, I want my 03, 04, 05 and 2006 to work. Of course I can always buy the 360 version but why buy the same game twice?

Re:Emulation

[Kayamon]

I actually worked on one of the games that's on this list, and I can confirm that we didn't give them the source code for it.

They're definitely doing a proper emulation - there's no simple recompile going on here.

Re:BLAH! (What's up with EBay?)

[Babbster]

It is, if you're a) willing to pay launch prices for a game console (yuck) and b) willing to play currently compatible games now and wait to replay other games down the road. Microsoft has been adamant that the number of Xbox games which will work in the 360 is going to increase over time, and with games like Splinter Cell (and sequels) still on the "to-do list" they certainly have incentive to keep working on it.

My suggestion to folks really concerned about this issue is to look at the list of Xbox games that will work at launch and look at the Xbox 360 games that are coming out from launch to, say, the end of January. If those games can't hold you over for a year, then just don't buy an Xbox 360. The thing's going to be market for a long time and the only people who need to be in a rush are those that just have to have the newest, shiniest toy and those that want badly to start playing the Xbox 360 launch games.

It doesn't matter

[locnar42]

It doesn't matter that the list doesn't include all XBox 1 games. It is enough for Microsoft to market backwards compatibility. Most people will never bother to read the list and just assume that all of the old games will work, so this pushes the blame (whether deserved or not) to the game developer rather than Microsoft.

They pretty much have to include the software emulation though, as Sony has turned this into an expected feature of consoles. People that own the original are more likely to upgrade knowing that they will have many more games to play at launch, even if they are not the superior quality.

Re:Who cares?

[epedersen]

The ability to play older games is why I am buying a nintendo revolution. I probably would buy a 360 if it would let me download and play old games.

Rather Impressive

[blueZhift]

I'm actually rather impressed because emulation is no small technological feat or at least what they've done probably didn't come easy or cheap. As far as marketing goes, they've accomplished enough to legitimately claim that the 360 can play your old games. Remember, even the PS2 cannot play all of the old PSOne games.

Anyway, I think the real fun will begin when the homebrew Playstation 2 emulators for Xbox 360 start making the rounds. And lets not forget MAME!

But why buy a Xbox and limit yourself?

[SuperKendall]

The problem with the "buy a cheap Xbox" scenario is now there's a new one, so anyone wanting a lot of games is either going to get the 360 or a PS2.

I knew a few people that, like me, bought PS2's because they could also play PSX games those people were interested in (like me they did not have a PSX).

The PS2 (in the US) outsold the XBox by an order of magnitude, more or less. You have to give those people all the reasons you can to buy in, and backwards compatiibility can help really grow the size of the library. But if it's not almost universal, and requires the more expensive model... I'm of the opinion with other people here that it will lead to a LOT of confusion.

N's new console does only do 480p

[YesIAmAScript]

The GameCube did 480p at launch (mine does), but the later versions ($99) lost the port required, and so only do 480i.

GameCube doesn't do 5.1 audio either!

Honestly, I think N is pretty smart. There is only a small amount of games that are improved by HDTV, especially if you can't assume the user has it, only support it optionally. If it helps them make their console cost less so they can sell more, I'm all for it. But I'd be disappointed if all the console makers went this route. There should be a console for those of us with money burning a hole in our pockets who want to max our our TVs. Sony and MS are taking that tack for us.

Re:N's new console does only do 480p

[bigman2003]

Script-

I agree wholeheartedly, and I think it is good. Different consoles are going in different directions, I don't see that as a problem.

The earlier poster didn't like the fact that Microsoft was pushing HDTV. Well then, don't buy their console if you don't like it.

Re:N's new console does only do 480p

[Deadguy2322]

The bigger issue with this sort of "Everyone else is building Ferraris, let's build a supercharged Yugo" mentality Nintendo follows is actually limiting. More and more people will be getting HDTV as their sets wear out and as the rollover comes. Building a system without the ability to take advantage of technology that is currently available and soon to be mandatory makes them look like they really don't care about the quality of appearance and sound. To be honest, it looks like they have given up on the home console market and are really only willing to work on the handheld end of things. I have a standard NTSC TV and a DTS/DD 5.1 surround sound system. I have heard th difference between Digital surround and Por Logic II, and it is a lot bigger than most people realize without hearng it themselves. More importantly, I have it, I want to use it. I am not likely to choose hardware that does not support the things I have (Digital Surround Audio) or the things I will have soon (I will be buying an HDTV in the spring to replace my dying NTSC set). When the time comes to spend a couple of hundred on a new console, I will be utting anything that won't keep up with the times technologically.

VirtualPC ?

[chooze]

All of the sudden Microsoft's purchase of VirtualPC from Connectix makes a lot more sense. The core enabling features for getting Windows to work on a Mac are the same as getting legacy XBox games to work on a 360. Most notably you need a x86 emulator for PowerPC. VirtualPC is already the fastest most reliable x86 emulator for PowerPC which would make it the ideal starting place for XBox backwards compatibility. Having a know start platform and end platform could only make things easier for the developers.

Re:VirtualPC ?

[Deadguy2322]

Um, MS didn't buy VPC from Connectix, they bought Connectix themselves. But, thi may be part of the reason why they did.

Re: genesis

[Peter Bonte]

agreed, the genesis/mega drive even got 50-65 % marketshare back then but lost it with the Saturn and Dreamcast who were not backward compatible. Sega also added a CD drive and 32 bit to the genesis but it didn't work out, just as adding a HD player to the xbox won't help. xbox is dead.

Re: Atari

[Peter Bonte]

The Atari 7800 sold reasonably good but the next Atari, the Jaguar64, again didn't have the backward thing, let alone all the problems in management they had.

not really

[xmodem_and_rommon]

To get around the problem of trying to emulate an entire CPU, I'm expecting to see a compatability layer that will make the 360 appear in some ways like an Xbox - a sort of DirectX (Xbox) to XNA (360) layer.

ummmmm isn't there a huge difference between the processors? x86 vs PPC? You'd need a good deal of emulation to bridge that gap. The endian's are different for one.
A better analogy would be that what microsoft is doing is like getting WINE to run properly on a PPC mac (it only runs on intel at the moment)

Re:not really

[SuiteSisterMary]

Don't forget, Windows NT 4 for Alpha had FX!32, which would quite happily run x86 binaries on said DEC Alpha, and the more you ran a particular program, the faster it would get, as the translator had more data to work with.

This isn't particularly new.

Re:Not a Linux kernel.

[fbg111]

Some mod apparently has no sense of humor.

Re:No Orta!??!?

[MBraynard]

I believe you are lying. Just buy an Xbox after the 360 is released. Will be about 100 new or less. Then you can or can't get the 360. I intend to have both setup next to each other. If you waited 4 years to get an Xbox 360 just to play Munch's Oddysee, you're lying. I call Barbara Striesand.

surround sound is very overrated...

[YesIAmAScript]

Having had it since 1987, and upgraded to Pro-Logic and DD5.1 as appropriate, I can definitely say surround sound is ridiculously overrated. DD5.1 is a lot better than the rest, technologically, but none of them add much to a movie or a game.

Nonetheless, I believe Revolution supports it (unlike Gamecube).

As to HDTV, by the time it hits the meat of the market, expect N to support it.

I think additionally, you misunderstand the whole point of Revolution. Largely, it will be used to sell you NES and SNES games over again (hello, Tecmo Super Bowl!). Those games aren't improved by HDTV at all.

Wanna use the game in your car? How many rear car video systems support HDTV? 1%?

N is heading for the meat of the market, and if they are $50 cheaper, it will help sales a lot.

But again, I'm happy they're not the only company. I have an Xbox 360 on order and will get a PS3 also. I'll be hooking them to my HDTV which I've had for a couple years. But I know there's a lot of people who don't have HDTV at all and won't have it on their game TVs (kids TVs?) in the next few years.

Re:No Orta!??!?

[RealmRPGer]

Looks like the read the post wrong. There wasn't enough weight for me to buy an XBox (that is, not enough games I wanted). Nor are there enough current prospects on the 360. HOWEVER, combined, there were enough for me to seriously consider a purchase. But now that a good deal of the games I liked on the XBox aren't supported on 360, that brings the total value down, and thus back to the point where it doesn't warrant a purchase.

don't bother

[xmodem_and_rommon]

Don't waste your money on a chip - get a softmod instead. cheaper, easier, less risk, you don't even need to remove the cover.

competition

[xmodem_and_rommon]

there are two reasons for this: one there is competition between ati and nvidia, where for the CPU, intel and AMD (whose CPUs are 99% compatible) dominate. Second, in a PC, graphics drivers are abstracted. In a console, abstracting the graphics driverss would kill performance too much (but would allow for easier backwards compatibility).

I read somewhere that the xbox nvidia GPU is about half as powerful as an nvidia MX440. And yet, the xbox has graphics far superior to an intel p3 @ 733mhz with an mx440. The reason for this is because every xbox is the same, and so there is no need to waste processing power with abstraction, so it can be used for other things.

drm

[xmodem_and_rommon]

why not put Xbox compatability into Vista, and/or Media Center

for one thing, the DRM on xbox games makes this pretty much impossible. Ever tried putting an xbox game in your PC? Your dvd player will open, and the best you'll be able to see is a cool video of the xbox logo that tells you to put the disk in an xbox.

No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to see any other files on the disk. they are made inaccessable through a very novel approach - abusing the dvd layers so that the TOC can't be found (the correct TOC is on the second layer, and there is a fake TOC on the first layer that points to the movie).

At present, the only way to read xbox games is with an xbox dvd drive.

What, so they can lose money?

[Xocet_00]

There is no reason to emulate another console's games on yours. The systems themselves are loss leaders, in general, and if you take a loss selling an XBox360 only to have your customer buy games from which Sony gets a cut, not you, you're never going to make any money.

The last thing you want is people using your hardware to run another console's games. You make your money when people buy games for your system and you collect the licensing fees.

Re:What, so they can lose money?

[kevn]

No you fool! (just kidding) my point is the PS2 (for example) is the market leader this generation (by a long shot) if the XBOX 360 could play XBOX and PS2 games, alot of PS2 gamers might switch to the XBOX 360. A similar technique was used way back in the days of the Colecovision (you could buy a module that allowed the use of Atari 2600 games). This convinced alot of people to upgrade to the Colecovision rather then the Atari 5200.

Re:What, so they can lose money?

[Xocet_00]

Huh. That's actually a really good idea. So long as it doesn't play PS3 games (which it obviously wouldn't.) Good call.

Attn Nerds -- You Guys are Missing the Point

[fujiman]

Yes, you can debate CPU and GPU emulation until you're blue in the face, but you're missing the point. MS is lacking true, full back compat for one reason: THEY DON'T WANT TO LICENSE NVIDIA'S IP for the 360.

MS and NVidia are not happy with each other. To get true BC on the 360, you'd have to emulate the NVIDIA instruction set perfectly... or so near perfectly that NVidia would probably sue. So MS did the only thing they could do... map DirectX instructions from XB1 to XB360.

Now some of the best games prolly made direct use of NVidia's hardware, so emulating them is a real challenge. To avoid being sued (or spending lots of money for licensing), MS has to continue Black Box emulation (BLEEM! anyone?)

This is not a mystery, nor is it unexpected. This is the consequence of changing GPU vendors midstream. The PPC--x86 problem pales by comparison.

Brilliant!!!

[elrous0]

Through the high-tech magic of my television, I have devised a scheme that will allow me to be 100% compatible with all Xbox titles. My TV has 3 (3!) available component sources. So I can just KEEP my Xbox, get a 360, and have my cable box all plugged in at the same time.

Holy smokes! Great idea, Batman! To the patent office!!!

-Eric

Obvious, yet dumb observation

[Morinaga]

If you have a large library of xbox games could I not conclude that you still, in fact have an Xbox console? So the lamentations of the betrayed are perhaps a bit exagerrated? It's a matter of convieniece rather than a matter of wiping out "x" dollars of games.

Re:Obvious, yet dumb observation

[Imazalil]

Yes, but do you really want 2 ugly boxes sitting next to your tv instead of just one? :)

*ducks*

On a serious note, think about having to hook them both up to your high-speed internet line, another thing to suck power, switching inputs from one to the other to the tv or having to spring for an adapter. Yes, trivial things for us /.ers but try to explain to your son-in-law that you only have 2 ip addresses from your DSL co., one for the computer, and he has to choose which xbox gets live access.

Im.

Surprise?

[Altima(BoB)]

Surprising? Remember, we're talking about the Xbox here...