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Microsoft Announces Xbox One Backward Compatibility
dotarray writes: Mike Ybarra is head of Platform Engineering at Xbox, and today he told the gaming world all about one of Microsoft's best-kept secrets — after more than a year of saying it couldn't be done, the Xbox One really is backwards compatible, so you can play all your Xbox 360 games on your next-gen console.
These newfangled games are lame. I tried ET once, never again.
Just as Xenia was really starting to mature.
Apparently, MS wants to pick up additional sales of XBox One. Smart move. They should have done this at release time. Better late than never. Now, 360 users will have a reason to upgrade as they should be able to play most games on the One.
OMG
a flood of 360s on ebay.
The initial batch of supported games is small and, really, not that exciting. It's a software-based solution, and even the games supported from the start have a laundry list of known issues.
This is not true native backward compatibility; for native backward compatibility, see the Nintendo platforms since the original DS, and to a slightly lesser extent, the PS2 and original PS3 hardware (some games didn't work/had substantial issues, but for the great majority of titles, it worked out of the box).
From "DRM EVERYWHERE, required internet access, and no backwards comparability" to "No more DRM then before, offline whenever, and play all your old games". They should have called the Xbox One the XBox 180.
MSFT is creating a compatibility launcher, but it's not deeply ingrained into the system.
It will be a nice transition piece for some, but if microsoft doesn't feel a game should be ported it won't.
This is the same compatibility layer found in xbox to xb360 and I ran into numerous games that never received support.
How is that even possible without a hardware chip?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
From: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox...
Banjo Kazooie: N n B
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
BattleBlock Theater
Defense Grid
Geometry Wars Evolved
Hexic HD
Jetpac Refuelled
Kameo
Mass Effect
Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark Zero
Small Arms
Super Meat Boy
Toy Soldiers
Toy Soldiers: Cold War
Viva Piñata
Viva Piñata: TIP
sudo mod me up
It looks like it really is as simple as just putting your old disc in your new console and away you go. No need for updates (although we might have heard him say something about downloads), and overall, a seamless experience. And the best thing? It's free! You've already bought the games once, you don't need to buy them again.
I would have assumed an update to enable this would be required, even if it literally only changed a 1-bit flag somewhere to turn it on...
What's more shocking to me is that not once in all this time has anyone with an Xbone tossed a 360 game disc in the thing, be it for shits and grins or even statistically by accident.
Shouldn't it have worked if the feature has been enabled all this time?
I've had a 360 since launch (technically three if you count the replacement motherboards) and I would have got the One if it had backwards compatibility, even to the standard that the 360 could play original Xbox games by using most of the on disc assets but having a recompiled native engine for the PPC chip in the 360. This doesn't look quite like that unfortunately but I'll watch with interest as I'm not sure how much longer my 360 will survive and there are still games on it I would like to play through again. If it does support enough of the games I already own (the list currently has none) then I may well add an Xbox One to go with my PS4.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
So now I can play both originals and remasters! Hurray!
A few months back I was picking a new console to replace my 360. XBox One would have been a slam dunk if it would have kept playing all the kids' games. Instead, we traded them all in and bought a Wii U.
Backwards compatibility is a huge feature for building up a user base across generations... but introducing it years after console launch, after pretty much saying they wouldn't, after a good percentage of your users have already switched to something, seems really uh... non-optimal.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I should have been a no-brainer for Microsoft to sell an XBOX One to. I bought the original XBOX shortly after it came out; I followed up with an XBOX 360 purchase as well. I'd never purchased any other console brand, and had been a faithful XBOX user from day one. But Microsoft XBoned its launch with a bunch of boneheaded, anti-customer moves like over-the-top DRM, always-required internet access and a refusal to provide backwards-compatibility, requiring extra shelf space and an extra input on my TV just to keep my existing games.
Sure, they have backpedaled on all of this by now, but it's far too little, too late. I haven't forgotten how Microsoft made clear to me that they saw me with disdain, and they've lost me for good. This promise of backwards-compatibility comes only out of desperation because they're being outsold more than two to one by Sony. There is zero chance I will ever consider an XBone, and the chances of me even considering their next next-gen console are slim to none unless Sony does something even more boneheaded.
They've lost the battle *and* the war, and yet now they've decided to actually put up a fight once it's already too late. It's laughable, really...
In the firmware there was a section of code..
If older_game then block_it();
now it's
if older_game then revenue();
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Meh, Microsoft lost me when they actively tried to prevent players from upgrading the Xbox 360's hard drive. I stopped buying more games to 360 after the 20GB HD filled up and the only way to upgrade was to buy a crappy Microsoft 120GB drive for a price of 2TB drive. PS3 had 500GB drive when I bought it and it can be replaced with a cheap drive bought from any computer store.
Ars Technica:
For some reason, I find the second quote much likelier.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox...
So an x86 based system is backwards compatible with programs compiled for PowerPC? In what corner of the multi-verse? The only way for this is emulation. Which is a bit hard to believe they would be able/bother to do.
Many of my save games are locked to my 360 and not portable.
Although I will say this has moved my thoughts on purchasing an XBone from not likely to possible.
Games are still the deciding factor for me and I'm still working through my backlog of 360 titles although none of them are on the initial list.
and quite an advantage over PS4.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are there plans for an Xbox 360 emulator on Xbox One?
SAVAGE: There are, but we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/...
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
After all, most of MS's stuff is inherently backwards.
Microsoft is Obsolete
Parent is not a troll. This is not real backwards compatibility of the physical media but ports in software form for 'select' games.
They were treating video game consumption as an addiction. They believed that their users were so addicted to new content that they could not resist the new console, and that once they had it any inclination to play the old content would result in buying the new sequels.
What they learned was.....people will happily stay with the old-but-still-works console, and will happily play more games on other platforms (including steam, which offers the best prices on games by far, now with refunds if you don't like the game you just bought).
So, their bid for profit was driving their clients to their competition. The fact that they did not foresee this shows just how out-of-touch they are with their target audience.
That last bit is the root cause of their error. Being greedy is fine...and knowing your target audience gives you what you need to fulfill that greed.
One possibility - since the AMD has 8 cores, can't they create 7 virtual PowerPC CPUs on each of the x64 cores, and use the remaining CPU just for administration & management? The recompilation solution - there's just one problem w/ it - wouldn't the customer have to have a copy of the recompiled game, or do they download a recompiled game for which they had original PPC binaries?
It sounds like you're essentially using the disc as a license key
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/backward-compatibility/
"For disc-based games that are a part of the Back Compat game catalog, simply insert the disc and the console will begin downloading the game to your hard drive. After the game has finished downloading, you will still need to keep the game disc in the drive to play."
So you insert the disc to verify ownership, it downloads a copy from the store that is certified to run on the newer hardware, and you need the disc almost like a license dongle to prove you still own it every time you play.
That's a lot of game downloads for some people, no wonder they've just released a 1TB version.
I see a lot of cynicism in this thread - much of it entirely deserved. However, from a broader perspective, this is undoubtedly a good thing - and not just in terms of "yay, I can play more things on my new console".
Why? Because it goes some way towards mitigating what was looking like a real risk of a "lost generation" of console games.
As older platforms have gone out of circulation, PC emulation has generally been there to keep titles playable. Hell, when my first-gen back-compatible PS3 died on me and I had to replace it with a non-back-compatible slim model, I was able to carry on playing my PS2 games from the original discs via PC emulation.
But there is currently nothing like working emulation of the 360 and PS3 and, given those platforms DRM measures and general hardware eccentricity, it seems reasonable to suppose that we are years, if not decades, from actually seeing it (if we ever do).
Neither 360 nor PS3 hardware was of the highest quality. The early builds of both consoles had high failure rates - legendarily so in the case of the 360 - and while later iterations improved matters somewhat, there's no getting around the fact that they both remained essentially disposable and short-lived devices built as cheaply as possible.
So at some point in the not-too-distant future (within5 years maybe? Certainly within 10) working 360s and PS3s are going to get harder and harder to find. And with no emulation for them, there is a good chance that a good chunk of the (huge) catalogue of games for those platforms is going to end up inaccessible to everybody bar specialist collectors.
Now, a good chunk of the library for both consoles is basically disposable junk anyway. Does it matter massively if a few iterations of Madden and FIFA end up lost to posterity? Not really. In other cases, games are being "rescued" via "HD remasters" for current generation platforms (which can, admittedly, feel like a rip-off), as has happened with The Last of Us and and as will soon happen with Gears of War and Uncharted. In other cases, developers looking to make money from their back-catalogue may put out PC ports. We've seen this rescue a few absolute classics like Valkyria Chronicles, as well as some more... shall we say... eccentric choices like the Hyperdimension Neptunia games.
But that still leaves a lot of games - including those which were subject to exclusivity agreements but didn't sell well enough to merit an HD-remaster - stranded. There are some good and noteworthy games here; Lost Odyssey, Vanquish, Eternal Sonata and so on.
Now, if the Xbox One has back compatibility all of a sudden, that means that we have at least a temporary stay-of-execution on all three of those games I just mentioned. Plus the fact that they're running on PC-like hardware keeps alive the prospect that we might see them running on "proper" PC hardware at some point further down the line. And if you care about preserving an unbroken history of gaming's development, then this matters. If you don't think that keeping that chain intact matters, then just ask the BBC how they feel about all of those Doctor Who episodes they threw into the trash.
Of course, we still have some PS3 exclusives that are essentially marooned; and that Cell architecture is going to render any kind of emulation, whether on general PCs or on current or future Sony console hardware, a bitch. That leaves some excellent games (the PS3-era Ratchet & Clank games were superb and a lot of Japan's output for the latter half of the last console cycle was PS3-exclusive) still stranded. But maybe this step from MS will put some pressure on Sony.
Hopefully, the PC-like architecture of the current generation will make back-compatibility less of an issue going forward, though there are still issues about the extent to which many games are essentially dependent on PSN or XBL network architecture.
I play a few marquee titles per year - all single player. I have a handful of titles I really love and love to play on console. Coincidentally, my 360 finally started failing after 7 or so years of faithful service a few months ago as I was running through all of the Dragon Age games again in prep for Dragon Age 3. If they can get my favorite games working well with the DLC and such, I'd probably buy one a One - I can replace my 360 and another major console in the current gen in one system. Attractive proposition, particularly if I get a deal on one this holiday season.
I suspect the publishers won't enable backward compatibility for titles they've "remastered" or think they may remaster in the future. Or it could be mostly titles that lean on DirectX and XNA calls for everything, rather than coding against the metal, because that's easier to port. But if it doesn't turn out to be a joke, this could be a good thing.
What about backwards compatibility with original Xbox games? If it had this then I'd consider it.
If I had to guess, and I do because there's no explicit statements about how it works anywhere, I'd guess that these are actually ports from the 360 to the 180, and the "download" mentioned in passing is the game binary. That's how it worked on the 360, which it pretty much had to do. But it was able to provide that (for a selection of games, anyway) because of the inherent design of the system; after all, it's just Windows and DirectX. That's what's responsible for the rash of cross-platform PC/Xbox games to begin with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In 90s game consoles were significantly cheaper, easier to use and more stable than computers of the day. Now you can get a steam machine for $499 or find a deal on a gaming PC at or below price of consoles. Just hook it up to TV, get a controller, run steam Big Picture and enjoy access to same games as consoles, plus many hundreds of PC-only games, frequently for $10 a pop. I can still "emulate" my Windows XP games on Windows 10 without jumping through hoops.
If there is future in console gaming, it's cheap boxes and hdmi sticks that can play casual games with a remote or do local network/cloud streaming of more demanding titles.
Still need DLNA. It does not have actual support for it ... only streaming PLEX... I still have my old xbox 360 because of that issue.
Come on Microsoft, stop #^#^#$ing around, and get your crap together
I think that its great that you get a compatible digital copy. I have tons of digital PS3 games that currently do not work on the PS4. With sony's acquisition of Gaikai and this PS Now thing, why can't Sony do the same instead of trying to get me to rent/stream a PS3 game I already own? Really hope this gets sony thinking
Somehow I expect that it was always supposed to be backwards compatible and it hit a horrible programming schedule snag.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
SHIELD is kind of that way too, in that it's just Android plus some NVIDIA stuff
How well does "some NVIDIA stuff" remedy the audio latency problems associated with Android? I tried playing games on an OUYA console (Tegra 3-based Android box), and the keypress-to-audio latency was distracting even when the TV was in game mode.
So an x86 based system is backwards compatible with programs compiled for PowerPC? In what corner of the multi-verse?
During the first years of the Apple Intel transition (late Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard), Mac OS X had an emulator to run PowerPC apps on an x86 CPU. I think it was called "Rosalina" or something.
And there are still console exclusives.
With an SACD-capable PS3 and a PS4, you can play PS1, PS2, PS3, and PS4 games, including those not ported to PC. But you still can't play Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, or Xbox One games. So unless you plan to catch 'em all, you have to weigh a particular console's exclusives against the vast library of PC exclusives. That is, unless The Unfinished Swan is an adequate substitute for Splatoon.
It also means only games that were released after the DSi can use WPA, older games are stuck with wep or no security.
Local network play on DS games uses Nintendo's proprietary network layer, which the homebrew community called "Ni-Fi", not IP. Pre-3DS games lost all online capability when Gamespy died and took WFC with it. So when Gamespy died, that was the last straw for me to switch all routers to WPA.
Until I can get a USB adapter and hook my steel battalion controller to the Xbox One, no deal...
I was there when the console market became a multi million market and turned into a multi billion market.
When I was a kid I got an Atari system but I never made use of it. I didn't like playing video games, I preferred tinkering around with physical things like bikes, motors, electronics. I resisted the Nintendo and Sega craze. I never was interested in the Playstations nor in the XBox when they were released and when I was also a potential 'target' for the marketing machine: young twenty-something with a good income.
Of course I saw many friends who fell for the marketing campaigns and bought the consoles and many games. But I also saw many people who just bought because 'they had to' buy the latests and greatest. I've seen with many people, of my age, but also of the new young twenty-something generation that they become less and less interested in those consoles. For a long time a gaming console was the pinnacle of the technological/digital revolution. But today it is just as old fashioned as a television set.
For a while games became more and more advanced, advanced in the sense of realism. But in its hearth it remains just a gaming console. How can you keep on convincing people that you need yet another console? What's so different about 1st person shooter 2015 compared to 1st person shooter 2010, expect for more 'realistic images'?
I can't see how the console market can keep on growing. If the desktop pc is declared dead because the growth is out of the market, and it changed to a replacement market, how long will the console market remain a growth market? How long will it take to declare the console market 'dead'?
I personally never understood why people would throw away a perfect working system with lots of expensive games, to buy a similar system with similar games that just have a bit more 'realistic' view. Yes, you can now control the games by jumping and waving your arms, but that's just a gimmick that becomes old fashioned pretty soon.
I personally don't see any progress in the console market, except the gradual improvements in image quality. The move to online distribution of games and video is the only thing left that can be worked out better. But that will unfortunately come at the cost of more commercials and tracking. And than what? Using your console to control all house hold appliances? What other potential 'revolutions' are there to justify spending a part of your income on consoles and games?
Well, it's time to post this news again :http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/22/4355984/xbox-one-backward-compatibility-backwards-thinking-don-mattrick
But you still can't play Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, or Xbox One games.
Thank you Captain Obvious.
So unless you plan to catch 'em all, you have to weigh a particular console's exclusives against the vast library of PC exclusives.
Why are you being such a Captain Obvious.
That is, unless The Unfinished Swan is an adequate substitute for Splatoon.
Not everyone has an interest in Splatoon, or vice-versa for the unfinished swan. Just because I have a PS3/PS4 doesn't mean I have to find the equivalent to Smash Bros for the PS3/PS4.
... difficult to believe that a significantly weak cpu core is able to emulate a semi decent powerpc although weaker than the one used in the ps3.
i'm going to guess that they're leveraging some gpgpu and possibly some other hardware and some software tricks, maybe dynamic recompilation? to make it work. i wish that they'd post more technical details.