Xbox 360 Updates Social Features, Back Compat

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.

Comments

Surprising

[Nerdfest]

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.

Re:Surprising

[twistedsymphony]

well, they're rolling down the ability to download Xbox 1 games thought the marketplace soon. Reports indicate that these will be little more than disc rips of the original games running on the BC feature of the console.

As nice a media piece about them still "caring" about BC on the 360 at this point I have no doubt it's driven by money... the more they support in BC the more they can pad their Xbox 1 download catalog when they roll it out (probably around the same time as the update).

Re:Surprising

[king-manic]

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.

Re:Surprising

[NoodleSlayer]

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.

Re:Surprising

[rtechie]

Many posters don't seem to grasp what happened with the original XBOX.

When building the original XBOX, MS choose to make a very "PC like" design that was essentially a specialized Windows PC. To save time and money, rather than developing their own hardware they outsourced that task to Nvidia and Intel who adapted existing parts (the NV25 and the Celeron 733) to the XBOX. Crucially however, they did not sell the production rights of those parts to Microsoft.

Fast forward a few years. The XBOX is selling nicely and Microsoft, like most console manufacturers, wants to reduce the price of the console to sell more units. Unfortunately for MS, since they don't own the rights to the GPU and couldn't reverse-engineer it, Nvidia has them over a barrel on pricing and they refuse to reduce the cost of the GPU (I'm told they were ballsy enough to actually try to raise it). Intel was much more willing to negotiate for the CPU (because they had competitors, like AMD), but that was useless without the GPU.

Because of their inability to cost-reduce the XBOX, Microsoft kills it prematurely. That's why absolutely NO XBOX games were release after 2006. Microsoft actually paid developers to have them move their games in development to the 360.

Fast forward to the launch of the 360: Without being able to include compatible hardware in the 360, MS is forced to rely on software emulation for backwards compatibility. Emulating Intel and Nvidia hardware on a Power4 system with an ATI GPU it even more difficult than it sounds. Consequently, backwards compatibility on the 360 is less that stellar.

You could blame Microsoft for this situation because they failed to ensure they held the rights to the Nvidia GPU, but personally I blame NVIDIA for being greedy. It hurt them in the end. Ever wonder why all the next-generation console have ATI GPUs? It's because of the way NVIDIA burned MS on the XBOX.

Re:So now, with a little work

[vonPoonBurGer]

I hear if you frag a friend, then a friend of that friend, then a friend of that friend, and so on to a depth of six people, you will eventually frag Kevin Bacon.

Re:This is weird...

[NekoXP]

especially considering how well Sony offered complete backward compatibility so perfectly on the PS2

It's not. The PS2 ran the same code (common MIPS architecture processor) and had the same IO controller for audio and controller access as the original Playstation. Compatibility was assured through hardware. The graphics controller was also superficially similar - enough at least to let your games run, just faster and with some blending tacked on top.

Nintendo hit the same concept with the Wii being able to play Gamecube games - it practically *is* a Gamecube, just faster.

The PS3 also includes some of the original components of the PS2 for compatibility's sake although they are starting to get rid of those right now, and they never worked so well. The Xbox 360 ain't even slightly like the original Xbox. New CPU, new IO, new graphics controller.. the whole thing is software emulation. It should be said that Sony and Microsoft have different compatibility goals - Microsoft want to keep Xbox owners happy by letting them use their old games and back catalogue (Nintendo have the same goal). After all in a world where Halo and Halo 2 (or Metroid Prime and Echoes) did so well, do you really want gamers to start from the third game and lose the ability to play the saga from the start? :)

Sony have decided nobody wants to buy a $500 console to play 8 year old games so they're ditching the feature. Since they continue selling the PS2 at ridiculously affordable prices, there's no point making the PS3 compatible. It's not like you can still buy a Gamecube or Xbox brand new, though, these days.

Re:Not diminished.

[Osty]

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

KOTOR 1 and 2 as well as Jade Empire (same engine as KOTOR, more of an active battle system similar to Mass Effect except with martial arts instead of guns) have been supported on BC for quite some time now. If you haven't played them, you really must. Especially if you're enjoying Mass Effect.