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Xbox 360 Updates Social Features, Back Compat

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the new-toys-for-everyone dept.

Microsoft is gearing up for another big update to Xbox Live, and soon they'll be offering a friend of a friend feature that will allow users to peruse their friends' friend lists. It's a voluntary service, and is gated by your age to avoid any parental fears. If you'd rather turn it off ahead of time, they already have a dedicated site set up for that purpose. (Gamertag login required.) That update will be dropping on December 4th. Relatedly, they're also rolling out a whole bunch of new backwards compatability options for your old Xbox games. Highlights include support for: Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, Indiana Jones And The Emperors Tomb, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Syberia II, The Bard's Tale, Worms 3D. There's also support for a slew of sports titles going all the way back to 2003.

6 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Surprising by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that they're still adding backwards compatibility 2 years after release. The real need for it diminishes as time passes, I would think. Personally, I'm waiting for some better video codec support so I don't need to transcode streamed video.

    1. Re:Surprising by OK+PC · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Personally I'm of the opinion that if it uses the Xbox name then it should be compatible with Xbox titles. Same for PlayStation.
      It is nice to see them continue support for Xbox titles, I am enjoying going through the games I missed first time around. Especially seeing as Sony seem to have given up on backwards compatibility. On the flip side, they do still sell the PS2 and you can't say the same for the Xbox.
      As a side note, Xbox games seem to difficult to get hold of/expensive. For example, I have seen KOTOR 2 for £20 pre-owned!

      --
      Did you get that thing I sent ya?
    2. Re:Surprising by king-manic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is nice to see them continue support for Xbox titles, I am enjoying going through the games I missed first time around. Especially seeing as Sony seem to have given up on backwards compatibility. On the flip side, they do still sell the PS2 and you can't say the same for the Xbox. PS3 has 1 version / 5 versions without backwards compatibility (BC), 2 of the remaining have ~80% BC, the other 2 have 90+% BC.

      360 has 1 version / 4 versions without BC, the remaining 3 have ~40% BC.

      Wii is ~99% BC with GC titles.

      I don't see Sony being against BC but they did trim it to reduce the price. MS has paid lip service to BC but isn't really that into it.
      --
      "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
    3. Re:Surprising by NoodleSlayer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But really isn't that into it?!?!?

      You realize that they are writing this emulator without having access to any of the specs for the CPU or GPU that were in the original xbox. It's not as simple are writing a 1:1 emulator simply because they don't have access to all the information to do that, they're effectively reverse engineering the original xbox to make sure that each game works. Because the emulation isn't perfect they don't have as large of a percentage of games, and they individually test each one. The fact that two years after release they're still updating the backwards compatibility list and still working on the emulator is pretty impressive in of itself.

      Not to mention that the Xbox emulator on the Xbox 360 renders the game at a higher resolution then the original xbox did, with Anti-Aliasing to boot. This is why Xbox games typically look better on the Xbox 360. Overall that emulation software on the Xbox 360 is a engineering marvel that it works as well as it does with what typically is some of the most hardware bound performance intensive code.

    4. Re:Surprising by Toonol · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't see Sony being against BC but they did trim it to reduce the price. MS has paid lip service to BC but isn't really that into it.

      But look at the trend. Backwards compatibility on the PS3 is going away... on the 360 it's slowly getting better.

  2. Not diminished. by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not for those of us who went from PS2 to XBox 360, which I suspect is a good chunk of folks. I never got to play KOTOR for example (has that made the list yet?), and the fun I'm having with Mass Effect makes me want to go check out earlier Bioware offerings. I also finally got to play Morrowind (after loving Oblivion) thanks to the backward compatibility. Heck, I only just played Halo *1* this year. :)