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.

The Third Age

Actually, the big news for me in that list is "Lord of the Rings: The Third Age". I've been itching to replay that for months, but now that I've given away my original Xbox, had no way of doing so. It was an interesting and ambitious attempt at making a Final Fantasy-style RPG out of the LOTR franchise and even though it didn't work perfectly, the production values were high enough that I'm looking forward to going back to it.

Surprising

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

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

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

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:Surprising

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).

So now, with a little work

After the update, you can frag your friends, their friends, their friends, their friends, ... and their friends It's infinite frag recursion

Re:So now, with a little work

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.

Dark Alliance

I'm glad to see that Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is on the list. I greatly enjoyed co-op multiplayer action RPGs like that back in the XBox/PS2 days. I think I'll grab a used copy at lunchtime; plenty of entertainment for only $12 and my Wife will enjoy playing through it again. I know Dark Alliance 2 has been on the list forever, but its so rare that it still commands upwards of $30 for a used copy in Gamestop. Besides, Dark Alliance was a much tighter game and had much less 'filler' than its rather lackluster sequel.

This is weird...

especially considering how well Sony offered complete backward compatibility so perfectly on the PS2. Nowadays, it's lost so much relevence that the "feature" is almost non-existent on the PS3 and exists only an incrimental add-on for the most mediocre of titles on the 360. (Legal issues on who owns what on the original Xbox's hardware, not withstanding...)

The only console to have it right on this generation is the Wii. (Which, strangely enough, may be why it's still doing so well despite the surprising large number of yawn-inducing, similarly designed party-game titles and the awkwardly made "classic" controller for the virtual console stuff.)

Strangely, you'd think backward compatibility would count for much more on the PS3, since Japanese households rarely have the kind of free space needed for keeping stacks obsolete hardware next to the TV. Sony wants to squeeze at least 1-2 more years of life out of the PS2 market, but without backward compatibility available to late adopters of the PS3, it's hard to see how anyone can really find much value in purchasing any more content for the older system.

Re:This is weird...

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.

The real reason for the compatability updates

We all know all those added titles was just a cloud around the real title, The Guy Game. Some developer wanted his child porn [kotaku.com].

6 degrees

My friends' friends, eh? I'm not sure what the setup is, but the punchline is "Kevin Bacon"

Re:How about...

they might get fixed... with every update that adds games they usually improve just as many past profiles as well. With that said PGR2 is a great title but owning a 360 I'd much rather be playing PGR4 these days.

Tried Thief 3?

They list it as "Compatible"... which means it'll run.

It's REALLY BIZARRE to play though, since every light source in the level can be seen through the walls... something in their emulated video code is really messed up.

Re:The friend of a friend feature

But really what I'd appreciate is some sort of network inspection, topology tool so you could figure out who was the best choice to host in a game. Even in circumstances when there's not much to do about a problem, like latency, it'd be better to just know what and where the problem was, as opposed to just observing it and wondering about its origin. Not to mention, all the data put together would give a very good measure of network performance offered by the various ISPs.

Wouldn't it be even better if for your substantial monthly subscription Microsoft provided the servers, which could thereby be guaranteed adequate bandwidth and good latency (at least to the backbone)? It's absurd that you pay money to Microsoft then have to host the damn games on your own system.

Re:Online gaming should be free

It sounds like you should be buying your Xbox live accounts on the per-month basis. This will prevent you from purchasing a service you won't use.

Now a what-if for you: What if you play a bunch of multiplayer games on a regular basis? Should that person be charged more because they play different titles? Better yet - why not pay according to time used - that would work perfectly with my AOL dial-up account!

All joking aside, Xbox live offers a service that allows people to have a highly reliable online experience, a rating system for bad players, a system for meeting and making friends, and a decent voice system. I think that's all worth $60 a year.

Just my two cents