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Microsoft Dismisses Xbox Backwards Compatibility
kukyfrope writes "In a recent interview on U.K. site Kikizo Peter Moore, Microsoft's head of the Interactive Entertainment business, claims that Microsoft has 'under promised and over delivered' Xbox game compatibility on the Xbox 360. He states that gamers are now looking more towards next-gen titles, forgetting about the majority of Xbox titles." From the article: "Moore's comments shouldn't be misunderstood. MS will be adding to its backwards compatibility list, but it hardly seems like a priority now that the 360 is hitting its stride and the original Xbox is getting less and less support."
SNES: Huge Success
Sega MegaDrive/Genesis: Huge Success
NES: Huge Success
He states that gamers are now looking more towards next-gen titles, forgetting about the majority of Xbox titles.
Try telling that to my friends who own Xbox360s and complain that they have to keep their Xbox around to play a couple games they really like. Maybe they aren't the majority, but I know a few. I don't mean to come off sounding fanboy-ish, but that's one thing I think Sony did well. I only need to have my PS2 hooked up to play all of my PS1 and PS2 games.
Slackware
That's some nerve to quote this from the article:
...
Moore's comments shouldn't be misunderstood. MS will be adding to its backwards compatibility list
and still call the article
Microsoft Dismisses Xbox Compatibility
My major complaint would be that they seemed to focus on the low hanging fruit, the games that were easiest to do, rather than on the best-selling games as was promised. I just checked the list and see that Soul Caliber II still isn't on it. I'm pretty sure that it sold very well. On the plus side, I see that they've added DOA 3 and Ninja Gaiden since the last time I checked, so they are indeed still working on it.
No, but hard drives in Xboxes are magically starting to fail.
The console's been out for almost five years, so we're nearing the MTBF on the hard drives, and the hard drive locking makes them nontrivial to replace.
I've got a fifteen-year-old SNES that still works (aside from my having to replace a broken power jack). How many XBoxes are going to have a fifteen-year lifespan?
Most people don't go to the store and randomly buy a game. They have a goal in mind, like, "I want to pick up PGR3." Depending on the game they're looking for, it may not be available on other platforms. If I'm going to the store to buy a copy of PGR3 ($40-50), I'm not going to decide to pick up a copy of Burnout 3 and NFS:U2 ($20 each) instead. Games aren't as elastic as other products. If I go to a restaurant and order a Coke, you can give me a Pepsi or any other non-Coke cola product and I won't much care. If I go to the game store and ask for a copy of Halo, I will very much care if you hand me a copy of Killzone instead.
First, the Xbox 360 is $400, not $600 (that's the PS3 you're thinking about), assuming you're quoting in USD. Second, I think Moore is mostly correct about backwards compatibility. The goal is to provide value for your customers during the first few months of a console's life when there are not a bunch of games out yet (and those that are out are launch titles, which generally means "not all that great"). Sony does this with backwards compatibility. Nintendo has historically done it by keeping their launch prices low and expecting you to keep the previous generation console hooked up. Microsoft did it with the 360 by providing extra functionality like demos on Marketplace, Xbox Live Arcade, and Media Center Extender functionality. Backwards compatibility with Xbox games was tacked on because Sony's made it a mandatory bullet point.
Seriously, how many PS1 games did you buy or play on your PS2 in the last three years? I think I played one (FFIX) and purchased none. And the only reason I played it on my PS2 was because it was already connected. I certainly could've dug out my PSOne and hooked it up.
That depends on the user. I know a lot of people who bought a 360 solely for Geometry Wars (they've since branched out, but that was their killer app). Yes, a $5 game sold them on a $400 console. Personally, PGR3 and Geometry Wars was enough to get me to buy. Oblivion and Fight Night Round 3 were worth purchasing, but I'm really looking forward to Forza 2 at the end of this year. If you're a Halo fanboy, you probably won't buy a 360 until late next year.
### It's far from trivial. Different CPU and different GPU.
Both architectures however are programable with DirectX, so unless you have something highly optimized for one architecture, it should be trivial to port via a simple recompile, especially when the porting is already taken into account right in the beginning. And even if there are differences in the API, it should be trivial for Microsoft to fix those. That 'porting' wouldn't be meant to create a full XBox360 version, but just a XBox version running on a XBox360, so I really don't see where there would be much difficulty involved.
### It's like porting a Windows game to run on a Power Mac.
PowerMac doesn't have DirectX, but OpenGL, thats a whole different beast. Porting apps from PowerPC to IntelMac for example is simple, different arch, but same API, porting apps from IntelMac to Windows PC on the other side is extremly hard, same arch but very different API.