Xbox 360 Gets Backwards Compatible, Final Fantasy

databeam writes "The official Xbox 360 press conference was Monday evening, and an AP article has news that the 360 is backwards compatible, and that Square Enix will be releasing Final Fantasy XI for the console." Coverage also available at Gamespot. From the article: "Along with a firm release date and price point, the other big question surrounding the 360 was backward compatibility with the library of games from the original Xbox. Robbie Bach, senior vice president and chief Xbox officer in the Home and Entertainment Division at Microsoft, made Xbox fans around the world happy when he announced that the 360 will indeed play Xbox games." Mostly. Gamasutra points out that backwards compatibility will be selective, with most but not all of the top selling games supported. Kotaku and the Guardian Gamesblog have firsthand accounts from the event, and to watch the conference for yourself Xbox.com has the footage. Update: 05/18 20:49 GMT by Z : Of course, not all the people there were people, if you catch my meaning.

The heat is on...

[Mister Impressive]

... now that both of the 2 fully announced consoles have their predecessors games to back them up, I feel it's actually a fair competition on which console has the games that people want.

Why?

[BoomerSooner]

Who really cares if it's backward compatable? If you have old games play them on the old system. Besides how many old games do most people play now anyway? Once you've beat Jade Empire or moved from FIFA 2003 to FIFA 2006 going back isn't usually a lot of fun. Maybe in 10 years or so.

Patches?

[Metaphorically]

Since they can't change the game, I wonder if they'll do this by working over some of the code that the ships in the Xbox360. They do something like that [microsoft.com] in Windows.

Emulation

[Chode2235]

Backwards compatability will be selective? Does this mean that they will be emulating the xbox hardware? Thats pretty amazing if it works, but I have my doubts that it will even run as smooth as the current xbox. Hopefully this means a much faster virtualpc, so I can play pc games on my mac.

Re:The heat is on...

[Mister Impressive]

Damnit, I was in a hurry after the good news. Let me rephrase.

I feel now it's more or less a level playing field, where now it will boil down to which has the better _new_ games designed for that console.

Re:Why?

[kutsu119]

I don't own an Xbox, nor do I want to buy one if the 360 will give me everything an Xbox could offer games-wise, and more. I want to play KoTOR, Jade Empires, Halo 2 or whatever, but only have a Gamecube at the moment. Tell me why this is a bad thing, for me?

Re:Why?

[chrismcdirty]

After you shell out $350 for the console, you may only get one or two games. And if your shiny new console can play games from your cruddy old console, then you can trade in the cruddy old one, or put it into storage.

I don't know about you, but I have something plugged into just about every input hole on my TV, and I hate switching cords around.

Connectix?

[TheRaven64]

Now we know why Microsoft bought the company that made the best x86 emulator for PowerPC on the market. Actually, we might have guessed that earlier - nice to have it confirmed though.

Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[Psykechan]

From TFA:
Microsoft Corp. said on Monday its new Xbox 360 will run video games developed for the earlier generation of its gaming machine

This doesn't state backwards compatibility. It could just mean that older games will be ported to the 360.

Bach said that it won't necessarily run all of the older Xbox titles but instead, run the "top-selling" games.

Uh huh. This sounds very much like ports to me. This sounds very much like Sony's PSP running old PS1 games.

Re:Why?

[WoBIX]

People who don't have a lot of shelf space for old consoles will care.

One of the first games I got on my PS2 was Xenogears, a PS1 game, and I didn't enjoy it any less on the PS2 than I would have on the original.

Re:Why?

[Anita Coney]

Because most people would rather have one console next to their TV versus two or three.

Can you imagine how asinine it'd be if every couple years DVD players were incompatible with prior DVDs?! Sure you COULD buy five DVD players, but that'd be asinine.

It makes a great selling point

[WickedClean]

I never had a PS1 prior to owning my PS2, so for me it was like getting two systems in one. Also, I think the price will drop on a lot of the 'older' XBox games that are stil highly playable and fun. Parents especially will have the choice of dropping 50-60 bucks on a new Xbox 360 game or getting 2 or 3 'classic' Xbox games for the same price.

Re:Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they have to emulate hardware, since the Xbox360 uses a completely different architecture. So, I'm surprised that they're even attempting backwards compatibility at all; kudos to them.

And, considering how much power they're packing into that crazy thing (3 3.1Ghz PPC cores? o.O) I think it's quite feasible for them to be able to run games full speed (especially utilizing optimizations like the 90-10 rule; shouldn't be all that bad).

Re:Why?

[WapoStyle]

because some people still like to play great games even if those games don't happen to be newest thing. I still drop Street Fighter Alpha 3, Symphony of the Night, Xenogears, and several other Playstation greats into my PS2. I don't have room to have a dozen systems hooked up.

Plus, if a game a truly great and worth paying $50 for than you will want to play it over and over for years to come. Take any Zelda game or Super Metroid for example. I've played through Super Metroid 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years alone. Just because you play a game once and never want to play it again doesn't mean that's how everyone feels.

Re:Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[MasT3quila]

The PS2 does not play ALL PS1 games. So it's not an unheard of travesty that the XBOX 360 won't play ALL XBOX games. From http://www.psextreme.com/features/faq.htm [psextreme.com] "Is the PS2 backward compatible with all PlayStation games? According to SCEA, there are a handful of PS One games that experience problems when played on a PS2. These games include: Arcade Party Pack, Arcade's Greatest Hits: Atari 2, Fighter Maker, Final Fantasy Anthology, International Track and Field, Judge Dredd, Monkey Hero, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Tomba. Note that this does not necessarily mean the entire game is unplayable, only that there is a known compatibility issue with a certain feature or part of the game. "

I'll bet

[JustNiz]

that this is a kneejerk announcement by Microsoft in response to the PS3.

There's probably lots of Microsoft engineers now trying to figure out how to hack backwards compatability into an almost-finished product, after a 'just make it happen but don't change the deadline' directive from the boss yesterday.

Like all projects with that mandate, quality is the first to go. To the end user, that means many old games will probably not work well, if at all.

Re:Connectix?

[leonbev]

I think that they bought them to get Virtual PC, so they would have a competing product for VMWare. Virtual server products are getting more popular now, and development teams are spending big money on them.

Having a good emulation team for the XBOX 360 is a nice bonus, though.

PowerPC and x86?

[Theovon]

For the backward compatibility, does the Xbox 360 have an x86 processor in addition to the PowerPC? Or does it emulate the x86?

No longer Big-N

[Faeton]

So Nintendo is totally left out of the loop now. Gamecube was a distant 3rd in the console scene, and relying on the laurels of the Gameboy isn't going to work any more with the advent of the PSP.

Nintendo in-house games are great, but if they don't get 3rd-party support, it'll start making a lot of sense just to make games for the other 2 systems rather than try to juggle both hardware and software. Sega went that path and I don't see why that Metroid and Mario can't show up on XBox 720 or PS4 in the future.

Re:"Mostly" Backward Compatible?

[mqx]

It may turn out that it is not "perfectly" backwards compatible: so what the XBOX 360 guys need to do is run and validate specific XBOX titles, and ensure that the specific title works properly. It may turn out that for any unvalidated titles, it's a case of "suck it and see": they may or may not work.

Re:Wow

[badasscat]

I don't know which is bigger news, the backwards compatability or the fact that MSFT was able to get Square to bring the FF series to the 360!

They only announced XI - which was actually "announced" in so many words years ago by Square. It's actually surprising it took them this long - it was supposed to come out on the original Xbox.

(I don't recall the original quotes they used, but it was something like "coming for next-generation systems", which at the time only meant the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube... though given the lack of online capability for the GameCube back then, that system was basically ruled out.)

My thinking is Square has had this in the pipeline since then, and at some point MS said to them "you know, why not just make this an Xbox 360 launch title?" They've clearly been holding back certain games for that purpose - Perfect Dark Zero being another example.

I doubt you'll be seeing the non-online FF's on Xbox. Square just showed both FFXII for PS2 and FFVII(??) on PS3 yesterday, which suggests to me that they're still basically in bed with Sony for the main lineage of story-driven FF games... though they will probably continue to release side FF projects like FFXI and FF:CC on other systems.

(Of course, what I wanna know is why Square needs to keep teasing us with this FFVII crap, then saying it's not actually coming out - just re-release the game on PS3 already!)

Re:No longer Big-N

[grungebox]

Gamecube was a distant 3rd in the console scene

*yawn* Baseless assertions bore me. The Gamecube did about as well at the XBox in the US, and completely destroyed it in Japan. If you add that up, it makes the Gamecube much more potent than the XBox, in terms of sales. If you mean hype/PR, then maybe the Gamecube lags, but Nintendo's press conference isn't till today, anyway.

"easily"

[autopr0n]

Emulation is never really that "easy". Unless the X-box and ps3's graphic controller is compatable, I kinda doubt it would be possible. And how on earth are you goin to split up X86 instruction code so that it can run on seperate parts of the cell processor?

Re:Truly backwards compatible? I don't think so

[XxtraLarGe]

The PS2 does not play ALL PS1 games. So it's not an unheard of travesty that the XBOX 360 won't play ALL XBOX games.

There's a big difference though. Only a handful of PS1 games don't run on the PS2, while it sounds like only a handful of XBox games ("best selling") will run on XBox 360.

Re:for all practical purposes, useless

[sznupi]

It greatly helps during initial console launch/soon after, when the library of new games isn't there yet. And I play quite a lot PS1 games still (new ones - for me at least)

No Controller ports

[goochman]

hince incompatible with lightgun and STEEL BATTALION. This may just be a "CYA" type "selective compatibility" since all the games work with the wireless controller.

just my $0.02

Selective Compatibility?

[duerra]

With "some, but not all" games being supported for backwards compatibility, there's no reason to believe that *any* games will work as originally intended. You can't call it backwards compatible if... well, it's not backwards compatible.

I can just see it already. Microsoft will heavily promote the XBox 360 as being "Backwards Compatible**"

** But not really. Actually, only Halo2 is compatible. Everything else is subject to this nice little disclaimer here.

Re:Fun with emulation

[panaceaa]

Keep in mind that both Sony and Microsoft make most of their profits from licensing fees relating to game sales. So if Sony opened up their next generation console to Microsoft XBOX 1 games, they would stand to lose revenue.

Re:Emulation

[AusG4]

Well, no...

The new XBox obviously is going to be based around the PowerPC instruction set, whereas the old XBox is based around the IA32 instruction set. They would need to emulate the CPU in realtime, translating IA32 instructions into PowerPC instructions. This is the biggest issue.

Beyond that, though I'm not sure yet, I'm imagining that XBox360 will actually run Windows, the same as the current XBox. Windows NT for the PowerPC was still a shipping product in the 3.51 days, so technically, porting the Windows 2000 variant OS that is current the on the current XBox to PowerPC is obviously possible. That said, this will obviously include all of the DirectX API's, and as a result, the API translation step is not strictly necessary.

The actual hardware emulation part is pretty clear - Microsoft recently purchased VirtualPC (which lets you run Windows on the Macintosh, which of course is PowerPC based). Anyone who thought they did this simply to have a nice, new Macintosh product is insane... clearly, they intended other uses for this beyond just the "Windows Virtual Server" product they have released, and I'm betting that emulating XBox on XBox 360 is the big one.

As I said, if they are using Windows/PPC on 360, then this saves them some of the overhead of VirtualPC strictly, in that they have the native API's available directly. Obviously a new version of DirectX is going to be used on 360, but shimming the old version in shouldn't (relatively speaking) be a huge problem.

Additionally, any games that multithreaded on XBox1 will obviously be able to have the NT kernel map those threads on to the multiple cores of the 360.

Long and short... am sure this can be done - is just a matter of how compatible they'll make it; though if Live has shown us anything it's that Microsoft is a little patch-happy with the XBox (a little too much, some would say).

Re:Fun with emulation

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"was based on a standard X86 PC to begin with"

Not in the least. XBox may be x86-based, but it is by no means a PC. It's ceratinly "PC like" in several regards, but it has a very nonstandard BIOS, custom DRM chips, and a custom chipset that's not PC compatible.

The closest thing to the XBox in the PC world is probably NVIDIA's NForce chipset, which is not surprising considering that it is derived from XBox technology. But NForce is still a long way from the XBox.

Re:Connectix?

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS2 compatibility was due to including the PS1's main chips (the CPU and graphics processor) as the I/O interface in the PS2. There isn't any emulation going on.

Gaming has finally ARRIVED!

[Thud457]

Just like Hollywood.