Microsoft Clarifies Backward Compatibility Stance

kukyfrope writes "Peter Moore, Head of Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft, has clarified previous comments about gamers not being concerned with backward compatibility on the Xbox 360, claiming his words were 'misconstrued' and reiterating Microsoft's goal to make every Xbox game backward compatible. 'It's quite simply not that we don't care about backward compat[ibility]. Boy, do we care about backward compat[ibility]... We're going to get darn close to that stated goal of every title done,' Moore promised."

Comments

at this rate

[underwhelm]

I hope they're working on some universal code that will support a bunch of games with one release. This nickel-dime approach will have them finished with the library in about 2037.

Meantime, tons of popular XBox games (Platinum Hits) aren't supported on the 360. As far as native games go, if I don't want to have a chick fight, drive, or play a sport, I don't have much reason to turn on my 360 at all.

Either one would please me: extensive backwards compatibility or a worthwhile native library. Right now the 360 offers neither. I just hope one or the other happens before I get bored with Burnout.

Re:at this rate

[jasko]

Reasons to turn on your 360?

Fight Night
Call of Duty
Oblivion.

Re:at this rate

[MBGMorden]

You can't really claim PS1 games as part of the PS2 library. Those games were older releases that we'd been able to play for years already on the Playstation. Every single person I knew that bought a Playstation 2 already owned the Playstation 1, so all the backwards compatibility did was allow us to put the PS1 in storage, effectively just making the entertainment center less cluttered (I also liked the tray of the PS2 compared to the lid of the PS1, as you can squeeze it into a smaller space since the lid didn't need to open up). With this in mind, backwards compatibility was certainly a welcomed addon by me, but it certainly didn't have any effect in my buying the system.

Re:Emulation?

[iknowrobocop]

Is the snes really comparable to an Xbox? The super nintendo had very limited hardware and it still took a good while for a decent emulator to come along. We're 15 years out of the release of the SNES now and there are still some things that the best emulators don't do (see Wikipedia on Snes9x). The Xbox is more complex and the games work in quirky ways that make a catch-all solution impossible. That's why you hear about Sony considering putting actual PS2 hardware in the PS3 rather than going the emulation route...

"concerned" = "worried about" || "care"

[Deathbane27]

So, to clarify the clarification...

What he meant was that they weren't worried about BC.

What people thought he meant was that they don't care about BC.

Re:Emulation?

[ivan256]

Besides, do you see working PS2, GameCube, or Xbox emulators on modern PCs?

Yes.

The compatability isn't there, but unlike Microsoft, unofficial emulator developers don't have specs and have to reverse engineer things. The speed is there though. Your generation generalization is really not a factor this time, since processor speeds grew by a signifigantly higher factor than they did during any previous console generation.

I think you would probably be surprised how few special cases Microsoft has in their Xbox emulator. Xbox just isn't that powerful or complex by today's standards, and the 360 is really well suited to emulating it. The troubles they are having with emulation right now are probably because they took a bunch of high-level shortcuts to get the product done quickly, and now they are busy replacing that code with general purpose code that accuratly provides low level emulation.

Re:Emulation?

[matlhDam]

In fairness, the core of the SNES has been well emulated for years; the problem's long been with the various support chips that came on the game cartridges themselves. At least with the Xbox you know what hardware's in there and that the games aren't being supplied with different hardware to emulate.