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More Xbox Titles Added to 360 List
Eurogamer reports that Microsoft will be adding more titles to its list of backwards compatible games. From the article: "Microsoft has made a minor update to the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list, adding patches to allow three new titles to run on the new console - namely Black, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Winning Eleven 9. The update, which is the first change to the list of backwards compatible titles in several months, also fixes issues with a number of games which previously worked with the Xbox 360 but had bugs in the compatibility code, including Ninja Gaiden, Fable, Half-Life 2 and GTA San Andreas."
...you have to release bug fix patches for a console.
Not having to worry about bugs, installations, and updates are major factors in what makes consoles more appealing than PCs for gaming. It seems to me Microsoft is failing to realize this.
You knew this was coming once they started adding hard drives into the console. What do you need for a save game? A whole bunch of state variables? That's not really data intensive. The moment I heard that the first XBox was coming out with a hard drive, my first reaction was "Oh boy, here comes the patches." Yes, I do think it's better to get save games from a hard drive than some plug-in storage device, but the size of the hard drives made it obvious that they were looking to use it for more than just save games.
Personally I'd rather the hardware continue to advance as needed and have backwards compatibility be a secondary objective. I don't want my (supposedly) cutting-edge machine hampered by being forced to handle 5-year old technology. If they can have it both ways by some handy-dandy emulation, then good for them.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.