New Xbox 360 BackCompat Update

docdude316 writes "Gamespot is reporting that the Xbox 360 got another backward compatibility update Monday. The article says 'Microsoft has updated its Xbox 360 backward-compatibility list, this time adding 39 new games and updating support for nine more. That brings the total number of Xbox games playable on the Xbox 360 up past the 250 mark.' More backward compatibility is a good thing, but where's Psychonauts and Conker?" No Pyschonauts yet == BOOOO! And where is Jet Set Radio Future?

Comments

screw this, I want soul caliber II

[hector_uk]

seriously, microsoft should really be putting all the effort into takeing over A list unique titles, like SCII, 90% of those games suck ass.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[GundamFan]

By unique do you mean exclusive or inovative and of high quality?

Soul Caliber II has ports on all three major last gen platforms. Plus part of the issue might be that there is a Soul Caliber game under development on the 360 on top of the fact that Soul Caliber III is out making Soul Caliber II "obsolete" in the eyes of the porting team.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[hector_uk]

Soul caliber III was ps2 only, and some people only buy one console per gen (I had a DC, but I don't think that counts due to it's short life) and i actually prefer SC2 on the xbox to SC3 on the ps2, it's still my favorite fighting game jointly with soul caliber on my DC, which I still play, SC2 is still a very widely played xbox title for many many people like myself who cant stand fist fighting games like DOA. SC2 is not my only gripe with BC it's also the PAL VGA adapter issues, how hard could it be to duplicate every 5th frame to turn 50Hz to 60Hz, half my XB games won't work just because I use a VGA adapter and cant switch to component with my TV.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[GundamFan]

There is no doubt in my mind that Microsoft's way of doing "backwards compatibility" has never worked... even going past there game busness. They don't seem to get that trying to adapt the game to the new system is doomed to falure. What they need to do is build the console to accomodate the old games but because of the way the Xbox was built the best way to do that is to crazy glue one to a 360. I feel your pain... esspecaly being stuck with an Xbox during what may have been the Plastation's (1,2,3...) golden era. Eh... good luck, I hope Microsoft sees money in BCing all of your favorite games, but I don't see that happening.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Soul Calibur, you shmucks.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[Duds]

You don't understand how emulation works. The 90% of games that "suck ass" as you put it almost certainly "just worked" when they made changes to get one of the AA titles to work.

Re:screw this, I want soul caliber II

[alcmaeon]

I with you on that. SoulCalibur II is the reason I own an original Xbox and not a 360.

Are old games really that great?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

What's the deal with getting the latest and greatest system when the old games won't run any better on it anyway?

The real big deal with XBox360 is that MS is releasing development tools that will allow the general public to develop games for the system.

Re:Are old games really that great?

[hector_uk]

Maybe because their are not too many good games for the 360 yet and some of up acctually have HDTV's and like anti aliasing that comes into effect while running BC titles, i have no 360 equivilent of MASHED, soul caliber, jedi academy, halo, SW:BF2 some are BC which is great some are not, this matters to allot of people, I gave my xbox away when i got a 360 due to lack of space and general kindness.

Re:Are old games really that great?

[MindStalker]

Kindness? As the owner of your kindness I have to say, suck it. Next time don't try and do me any favors. /Paid for by the committe to suck it, suck it hard trebek.

Re:Are old games really that great?

[gEvil (beta)]

Keep in mind that he said "...due to lack of space and general kindness." I read that as saying both his space and general kindness were lacking...

Re:Are old games really that great?

[Deadguy2322]

Giving some poor sucker an Xbox is not an act of kindness.

Re:Are old games really that great?

[hector_uk]

I'm a mac user that uses no other M$ product, but it was the best console of it's gen if you not into japanese games and actually have friends to play with on xbox live, though this is /. so i think that part will be lost on 90% of you.

Re:Are old games really that great?

[AdamThor]

Soul Calibur 2 is that great.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball yet == BOOOO!

BOOOOO

[Anonymous Coward]

BOOOOOO no Psychonauts or Conker!
HOORAY BEER!

Great Microsoft!

[macaulay805]

Now how about fixing the Xbox Live Arcade Game problem when you swap consoles out because your previous one died! Ahh, DRM at its finest.

... of course, it'll only get worse later on ...

Re:Great Microsoft!

[Asmor]

Uhh, that's really not a very big problem.

His girlfriend bought the games, not him, meaning his girlfriend needs to be signed in in order to play them. Note that he can still be signed in on his own account and playing it, just she needs to be signed in as well as, say, second player.

It's more of a hassle than it should be, granted, but it's quite overblown.

Re:Great Microsoft!

[macaulay805]

Well, now after talking to a manager at tech support (they've called me back on an open ticket issue), the fix is to:

1. Get a refund of Microsoft Points (via proving your innocense that you've swapped the console).
2. Create a brand new silver account
3. Apply the Microsoft Points refund to the new silver account.
4. Purchase games on the new silver account.

Well, the proposed solution seems fine and dandy, untill you have to swap out your console again.

So fast forward to the 5th console swap (not out of proportion, due to that fact I'm close on my fifth one). Repeat the above steps!! How many accounts do you need to prove to get them to lookup the purchase history for a refund? How many times do you need to give out your credit card number? What? Ouch. (Verified by asking the manager regarding multiple console swaps.)

Hey, I just thought of something, how many subscribers does Xbox Live have? Any duplicates?!

Re:Great Microsoft!

[Allison Geode]

if you're on your 4th xbox, and are getting symptoms that make you think that you'll have to exchange it again, you're probably doing something wrong. the probability of getting that many flawed systems is very low, i'd think. I'm still using my first machine, and it works fine. if its overheating, try moving it away from the wall. let the vents in the back of the system do their job! the other thing i do, is.. one online account per system. i don't mind my friends playing with me, but their accounts are local only. it is, at the end of the day, *my* system. as it stands, the only time i log out of it, is when one of my friends wants to play dead rising (so they can play on their own account and not overwrite my save data.)

Travesty = No Warriors

[RasputinAXP]

I still see no way to play The Warriors on 360.

Now THIS is a travashamockery.

I need to beat the Moon Runners with bats.

MICROSOOOOOFFFFT...come out to PLAY-EE-AYYY!

Lego Star Wars II?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not actually out yet! *And* there's a native 360 version too.

How about improving some current games as well?

[PrescriptionWarning]

Most games seem to run fine, the ones that are compatible, however the perfomance of one in particular always comes to mind: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 (and maybe also 1). Not only is there an occasional audio glitch in the form of a piercing buzz, but also significant slowdown in every battle. Now come on, utilize those PPC cores!!!

@ work

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone list the games they added. I'm @ work and can't get the site to open. Thanks.

Full list.

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

for those of you behind firewalls and corporate domains. . .
New Games
Aggressive Inline
All-Star Baseball 2005
Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis
Burnout 3: Takedown
Catwoman
Counter-Strike
Dead to Rights
ESPN Major League Baseball
Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly Director's Cut
Freaky Flyers
Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - Island Thunder
IndyCar Series 2005
The Legend of Spyro: A Beginning
Lego Star Wars II
Links 2004
Maximum Chase
MTX: Mototrax Featuring Travis Pastrana
MX vs. ATV Unleashed
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection
Outlaw Tennis
Over the Hedge
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Richard Burns Rally
Rogue Trooper
Serious Sam
Shincho Mahjong
Smashing Drive
Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run
The Suffering
Taz: Wanted
Torino 2006 Winter Olympics
Trigger Man
True Crime: Streets of LA
Vietcong: Purple Haze
Wrath Unleashed
X-Men II: Wolverine's Revenge

Updated Games
All-Star Baseball 2003
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart
Digimon Rumble Arena 2
Ford vs. Chevy
Half-Life 2
The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer
Kabuki Warrior
Magatama
Mortal Kombat: Deception
Sneakers

Re:Full list.

[dook43]

Lego Star Wars II

This is significant because it 1) isn't out yet, and 2) it isn't being released as a native X360 title. The original was one of the best games I've ever played.

Re:Full list.

[dook43]

Looks like I was mistaken, it will be released for the X360 natively.

Not convinced about the level of compatibility

[GreatDrok]

The only Xbox game I have bought so far was Halo 2. I had never played it because I didn't have an Xbox but when I bought the 360 it was only £10 so I figured "what the hey" because MS would obviously make the effort to ensure that Halo and Halo 2 played perfectly. Not. I don't know if anyone else has played it through from start to finish but I have and I can tell you that the emulation is not perfect. I don't know how much better it looks than on the Xbox (I believe they updated some of the textures) but in the later levels I noticed that whenever there was a really bright flash there was a residual semi-transparent image of the flash that wouldn't go away. Yes, you could see through it but it was really annoying and meant that you had to save your progress, exit to the main menu, and then reload. I lost count of how many times I had to do this. I have not bothered to buy any more Xbox games. Mind you, I haven't bought many 360 games either (at £50 a go what do you expect?), just a few preowned ones and nothing really that stands out as being massively better than the original Xbox.

Oh, I played the demo of Saints Row having heard it was better than GTA: San Andreas. No, it isn't. The control is crappy, there is far too little blood and it crashed my 360.

Why not Morrowind?

[Travoltus]

Why haven't they made Morrowind compatible with the 360?

Re:Why not Morrowind?

[k_187]

because they want you to go buy oblivion. Why isn't burnout revenge backward compatable?

Modded funny? This is a tragedy!

[Xocet_00]

I got an XBox 360 and a brand new HDTV. I retire the XBox, plug everything in and play. The next day I get home later than my girlfriend, who is staring unhappily at the new set up. She plaintively asks why DOAX isn't working on the 360? She likes collecting bathing suits. I check the list. It's not there.

Now, she paid for the HDTV too. DOAX looks all pretty-like in HD. I've only got two component inputs. So I've had to move my PS2 (making a moot point of my $35 component cables) onto an S-Video feed (I still cry at night over the loss of Shadow of the Colossus in progressive scan) and have the XBox consume precious HDTV inputs for the sole purpose of running DOAX.

Tragedy.

Some people just don't understand!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think MS has done an AWESOME job so far, porting the game that they have.

The single biggest reason why people are unimpressed/upset with MS's limited backwards compatability list is because they're comparing MS to Sony's ability to support Sony's own old games. But many people fail to realize that Sony has been using the same-ish hardware for all their consoles (at least I think so).

However, Microsoft not only put a more complex processor in the 360 (3 cores in the Xbox 360, and 1 core in the Xbox), they put a PowerPC based CPU in the Xbox 360 (what old Macs used I think) versus the Xbox which used an x86 chip.

There was a reason why very few PC games were ported to Macs. The reason is because of the differing CPU architecture.
So the fact that MS managed to port as many games as it has is commendable. However, I do think that they ought to keep hard at it, making more, and more games compatible.

Just my two cents.

Re:Some people just don't understand!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should people understand and be impressed by their attempt?

Do or do not, there is no try...

Although they didn't promise this, they didn't deliver either. I'm not impressed by their feable attempt, no more than I'm impressed by the number of MHz or Mbytes or nanometers or megaWatts. Weren't we just supposed to have a console gaming experience with Xbox360?

If I wanted a simulated console on a different box experience, I might have well just waited for the Xbox emulator that is bound to be released real-soon now... x86 X-box x86 pc emulator, that sounds like it'll be better than emulating the x86 on a power-pc...

Being impressed with technology for technology sake is for technogeeks and the ./ crowd run pirate games on their chipped consoles anyhow. Microsoft should be caring about the people that pay real money for their games.

No Steel Battalion?

[PSXer]

While I realize it's probably way near the bottom of the "to do list" and will probably never be added to the BC list, that'd sure be nice. The controller takes up enough space, I don't also need a box that takes up space to play just a few of my favorite games that still aren't compatible with the 360.

Xbox controllers are esentially USB, so it wouldn't be too hard to get it to work with the 360, right?