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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."
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.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
All my old Xbox games should be playable on the Xbox 360 by 2015..... maybe
That, and large parts of the classic Xbox architecture are patented by NVIDIA, which is unwilling to license them to Microsoft for use in an ATI based console at any price short of 51 percent of market cap. Besides, do you see working PS2, GameCube, or Xbox emulators on modern PCs? Emulation generally needs a gap of two console generations to work well, outside of special cases that can be high-level-emulated. Microsoft's goal in Xbox-on-360 emulation is to make each game such a special case.
I mean, the most important game on the list has backwards compatibility already.
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Major Nelson's interview of Peter Moore said that they were essentially looking to provide more updates in the next week, and that two of the new titles for backCompat would be Lego Star Wars and Doom 3. There will be about 20 titles in this update.
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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...
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wtf? mame developers and such are not pirates. Gotta love those tar brushes. You stocked up on feathers?
...we is gonna hve that backwards compat for you, if it's the last thing I do. Boy, we'll get'r done! Now just let me fire up this batch o' rotgut, and I'll get you your backwards compat.
I have freaks! I did something right...
>Boy, do we care about backward compat[ibility]...
And, we will tell you how much you should care about it too. We know exactly how much is perfect. You will be happy with that amount of compatability.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The mere fact that games are being handled on a case by case basis implies that it is a re-engineering of the original code to produce a new port of the game.
Similar to the Linux ports of Doom and stuff (port the engine, use the graphics from the original disc)
liqbase
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.
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
This is entirely pointless seing as many games ALREADY ON THE LIST don't work correctly and you can't copy your data over.
Halo 2 has various glitches that slow the frame rate to 5FPS, or the screen will screw up and show an overlay of the previous level while you are trying to play.
Forza either runs too fast or too slow and the FMV sequences play in a reverse/negative pallete (its all blue and green and purple) and play all screwed up on my X360.
Also since you cant copy your data forward it really reduces the usefulness of BC. All the weeks and months spent on Forza building up skills/stats/cars/money etc are effectively gone unless I want to play it on the old Xbox.
There are other examples but these 2 are the first that came to mind.
Somewhere, a bunch of programmers are busily recompiling x86 code for PowerPC and looking for endian problems. It's a routine headache. Remember, the original Xbox is quite vanilla; it's basically a PC with an NVidia graphics processor running a stripped-down Windows 2000. In fact, most Xbox games can be run on PCs with the development environment (usually VC++), if you have the tools and files to build the game. (No, fanboys, that doesn't mean you can run the retail game on your PC.)
I wonder if the porting job is being done in the US or in some low-wage country.
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.
spoken like someone who doesn't own a 360. If you read up on the whole BC thing, you'll find that most games ARE special cases, which is why the emulation list is 200 some games long whereas the list of xbox titles is closer to the 600-800 title range...
For emulating xbox games on PCs, there's the added benefit of the instruction set being identical and the API matching (both directX) allowing easy conversion. Emulating the cube or PS2 is much harder.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What's the deal here,...
I mean they promised B/C on high selling titles and then released it with a fairly piss poor list besides a few games and have mostly ignored it since.
Microsoft want to promote the X360 in Japan and so far it's going like shit, the least they can do is to make as many games b/c as possible, it's a damn logicial thing to do because places where the X360 isn't doing so well, at least they can add the bulletpoint of b/c to convince current Xbox 1 owners to grab it or to convince people sitting on the fence 'hey, buy our 300$ console you can not only run these new games but all these old ones'
Sure it's not the be all and end all selling point but considering the X360 was released substantially too early (compared to previous console "cycles") they need to do all they can.
to port of Barbie Horse Adventures.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
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.
Forget about all of this backward compatibility bullshit. Its the feature that everyone talks about but no one hardly uses. I can count the times on one hand how many original PS1 games I've put into my PS2. Why do I want to play MGS1 on the PS2 when the GC has a remake of it? To MS's credit they're trying or they claim they are. The Xbox has about 800 titles and the PS2 much larger but with the radical diferences in hardware it can be pretty tricky to emulate. Look at the hard time its taking homebrew programmers to get N64 on the PSP or any other system for that matter. Both companies have to sift through the "important" titles to make sure they work, and sales figures chose those. Do we make sure that Kabuki Warriors and MTV Celebrity Deathmatch are compatible with the 360? Hell no but we sure are gonna make Riddick and Ninja Gaiden comaptible. How many PS1 games were compatible with the PS2 and every iteration of it? The feature is just there so you don't feel so bad plunking down your hard earned cash into the "next generation" of consoles. PC hardware changes more frequently and hardcore people upgrade just as much. Consoles last about 5 years, hardcore gamers usually have all 3, and people are whining and complainig that they can't play a copy Barbie Horse Adventure or whatever the fuck on their "new" console.
I remember when the PS2 was released and the only new game worth playing was Gran Tourismo 3 while we waited and waited and waited for new games. Without backwards compatibility I would have shoved it in the closet and gone back to playing my original PS. There are about three games I want to play on the 360, so I feel the same about the 360 as I did the PS2 and I would had bought one by now if it played more than two of the twenty of my current Xbox titles. As games grow ever more expensive and the wait between titles seems to be longer than ever, backwards compatibility seems a lot more important than it used to be.
To top it off, and I say this a lot, I am sorry, is that what you think backwards compatible means and what Microsoft has it its head are two different things. There are plenty of games of the "compatible" list that really aren't -- they freeze, have framerates that drop to near zero, are filled with bugs that make the game unusable, laggy or unusable on-line play, and on and on. Granted, there are some games that were in that category that are now fixed, Ninja Gaiden was one such game, but Microsoft still has a long way to go.
Given all the time and money they've spent getting older games working on the 360, I wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper for Microsoft to simply have thrown at least some of the components from the original Xbox into the machine to ensure compatibility. How long are they going to grind this mill, it's got to cost them money?
Even if they do add more titles, the backwards compatibility is still nearly useless for many games as there is still no way of transferring saved games from the Xbox to the Xbox 360.
I'm worried that Sony may try to pull the same stunt. Like the 360, the PS3 is missing memory card slots for the previous generation, so saved games could be a problem there as well.
Working PS2 emulator - Pcsx2. The only game I've tried that hasn't worked is Contra: Shattered Soldier. (died after "Now Loading" screen) Every other game and everything else worked fine minus graphical glitches.
XBOX Emulator? The XBOX is for the most part an x86 machine running off of a modified win2k kernel. I'm pretty sure someone's working on that right now to make a computer function exactly like an XBOX (XBOXOS? - the next Windows?)
Gamecube? Well, I don't know about that - has anyone emulated the Panasonic Q yet? (Had both a DVD drive and a gamecube drive in it, still retailing for around $600 IIRC)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You mention SNES9x but leave out ZSNES, which handles everything minus some chips that acted as anti-piracy measures? Zsnes does far more than snes9x does, and the only problem I ever had was due to poorly ripped ROMs. (Get a real good copy of pilotwings and there are no graphical errors)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...to backpedal that often and that quickly? Microsoft in gaming is like the fat kid trying to make friends in school, he'll tell you anything to gain your friendship.
Fat Kid: "Yeah! I love the Xbox 360."
You: "Eh, I'm more of a Sony fan."
Fat Kid: "Oh, Yeah! I love Sony waaay more than Microsoft."
MS: We will make every Xbox game compatible on our horribly kludged backwards compatibility.
Fans: Woo hoo! I'm buying an Xbox 360 then instead of an Xbox since I get the best of both worlds.
MS: Um, screw this, it's hard and we don't make much money from the time investment... let's not push this anymore.
MS: The next gen games are sooo great you don't need those old, crusty original titles after all.
Fans: uhh, WTF? We actually remember you promising the moon and stars, what happened?
MS: Oh, yeah, we were just kidding... I mean our comments got misconstrued, yeah that's it.
Fans: *Holding their sore asses* Something makes us believe you really don't care about anything but our wallets...
How can people not see through this crap? Yet people keep going back to get anal raped over and over by them and somehow it never sinks in. Amazing.
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