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.
That's not what this is though. If you heard their actual announcement, it's not backwards compatibility. What they're doing is that if you have a 360 physical game, you can redeem it (no details yet on HOW, sounds like you'll put the disc in the Xbone and it'll auto-redeem) a digital copy. So this will only work for 360 games that are on the Xbone's digital store (they're stating around 100 by Christmas).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
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
Ars Technica:
For some reason, I find the second quote much likelier.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
A few things to note about nintendo portable backwards compatibility.
1: They tend to drop support for games from older generations. The game boy micro and later don't support GB/GBC games. The DSi and later don't support GBA games.
2: The DS doesn't have a link cable port so while you can play GBA games you can't use link cable (or wireless, see below) in them
3: The DSi and later don't have a GBA style cart slot, so game features that rely on that slot (for example transferring pokemon from GBA versions) can't be used on the DS.
4: There is no hardware abstraction on the wireless. This means that a GBA game can't use the wireless on the DS at all. It also means only games that were released after the DSi can use WPA, older games are stuck with wep or no security.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Of course it's a bid for profit, whether immediate or long term. Why they thought it'd give them more profit has a bunch of reasons too, which may or may not pan out.
* make people buy the new console for the new games - check, though that may not have got as much market as they hoped
* hidden feature to later steal market share (ps4 lacks backward compat... which, IMO, is dumb... xbox can enable it easier due to less significant architecture changes).
* As said below, this is NOT enabling all games to work. It doesn't even use your old game - it just uses it to verify you have it so it can get you a digital copy of the xbone version. This is not backward compat in any way - it's a port they'll give you for free, and only for ones where all the red tape is cleared and they have a copy (ie. AAA titles could refuse to port to force repurchase; small titles may not have the means; etc).
AFAICT, this is smart, though misleading, marketing, and nothing more.
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.
These newfangled games are lame. I tried ET once, never again.
It's probably a good thing because the article is misinformed. It's not ALL titles and you don't play the disc. You put the disc in and will be given a version you can download for free (presumably recompiled for x86). The only problem is the initial compatibility list is very sparse at ~100 titles with "more being added" which could mean another handful or hundreds but doubtful that you'll get all you games - especially those they think they can re-monetize.
According to Mary Jo Foley, this statement was provided by Microsoft officials:
What we did was essentially built a virtual Xbox 360 console entirely in software. So when you launch a game via Xbox One Backward Compatibility, you'll see that the game first starts up a virtual Xbox 360 console, then launches the title. The work is ongoing as each title requires individual packaging and validation work to enable that virtual console capability, but we're committed to continually rolling out new titles each month.
This doesn't sound like porting a game, or a game that is very similar. It's the exact same game running in software emulation.
But the emulator may be adjusted on a per-title basis to ensure optimal performance.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Yes, the 360 will be software emulated. It sounds like games are not ported, but the same binary will be used.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.