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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Will Xbox2 Be Backward Compatible? 94

Posted by timothy from the time-will-or-will-not-have-told dept.
An anonymous reader submits "In an interview on Wired News, Bob Wiederhold, President and CEO of Transitive Corporation said QuickTransit will allow the Xbox Next (aka Xbox2, which will have a PowerPC CPU) to run first-generation Xbox games which were written for an x86 Intel chip. Transitive is a provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system pairs. This could mean Microsoft will after all make their next generation consoles backward compatible, unlike what was announced in June." I can't quite tell how hypothetically he's speaking; the no-performance-hit OS switching the article talks about sounds pretty hard to believe.
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Will Xbox2 Be Backward Compatible? More

Will Xbox2 Be Backward Compatible?

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  • Ignoring the fact... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Recoil_42 ( 665710 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:43PM (#10251292) Homepage Journal
    ..that we already had this exact story on the front page a couple days ago, i believe this whole thing is bullshit, i mean, c'mon, their demo was for the 'linux' version of Quake 3 on the Mac -- could they not choose a game which was already on the Mac?

    and also, i think GamesIndustry.biz said it best:

    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?ai d= 4429

    ----------

    The Xbox 2 rumour mill has turned over once again, after a Silicon Valley start-up boasted that a new piece of software emulation technology would allow the next-generation console to play original Xbox games.

    QuickTransit, a piece of software originally developed by a computer science professor at Manchester University in the UK, allows the "transparent" emulation of software across different hardware platforms, its makers claim.

    Revealing the software to the world, Transitive Corp demonstrated the system running Linux software (presumably compiled on different processor architecture) on Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh systems at performance which, the company says, is indistinguishable from native platform performance.

    The comment that has sparked interest in the games industry, however, is a statement from Transitive CEO Bob Wiederhold, who said that the QuickTransit software will allow the next-generation Xbox to run software designed for the current console.

    It's not clear whether this is meant to mean that Transitive is actually working with Microsoft on Xenon emulation technology, but a number of factors make this seem like an unlikely scenario.

    For a start, the Wired article in which Wiederhold's claim appeared went on to say that Transitive has six customers, all of whom are as yet unnamed and all of whom are PC manufacturers, with no mention of any Microsoft relationship.

    Besides, what works for a PC or server environment in terms of emulation isn't necessarily the same thing that will work for a console - which has limited memory, a key constraint on the QuickTransit system, which interprets recognised blocks of code by replacing them with functionally identical blocks for the native processor.

    Regardless of how fast QuickTransit's code is, it will also still face major issues in translating the graphics functions of existing Xbox titles, which are written for an NVIDIA chip, into functions on Xbox 2, which will use an ATI chip - not just technical issues, but potentially legal issues as well.

    Sources close to NVIDIA have previously hinted that they do not believe that Xbox 2 can play Xbox games without violating NVIDIA intellectual property rights, and that they may take legal action if the Xbox 2 does boast this functionality.

    In face of this, it would appear much more likely that Wiederhold simply chose the Xbox and Xbox 2 scenario as an example of one problem which would be made easier to solve using the technology being marketed by his company.

    However, the games industry at large is likely to keep a close eye on developments at Transitive in future - as any technology which allows new hardware to cheaply emulate older consoles and platforms would be welcomed by many companies in the market.
    ----------------

    C'mon guys, how many times have we heard of this exact claim from some unknown company, and its turned out bullshit every time!

    • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:10PM (#10251511) Homepage
      Let's not forget the fact that Microsoft bought Connectix (possibly for) Virtual PC. That means Microsoft has all the software neccessary to allow x86 programs to run on PPC processors, plus the have the source to the X-Box and its libraries. They could do a better job than some third party (assuming that that software mentioned actually exists and does what it claims, which I doubt).

      If there is backwards compatibility (and I SERIOUSLY HOPE THERE IS), MS can do it in house, and better than any third party. If MS doesn't make it backwards compatible and this company released a program to let you, MS could appear in almost no time with a perfectly working program to do the same thing.

      • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:4, Informative)

        by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @08:43PM (#10252000) Journal
        A couple of caveats here on this theory,

        1) VPC never performed at an equivalent speed to the native CPU. The best performer was of course Win95, the worst XP. IIRC XB1 was some kinda Windows embedded, so this remains a question.

        2) With i think version 3 or version 4 VPC did not support 3D. The performance just didn't cut it. *HOWEVER* since the video in the XB1 is a known, I suppose it may be possible to just automatically route all the video calls to the GPU and just toss it onto the screen. (I am not an engineer so i don't know).

        In conclusion, i think the best best would be to just toss an extra x86 cpu on the board with some graphics glue for the new gpu and go that way.

        • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:30PM (#10252395) Homepage
          True. But an X-Box runs at 700 (or maybe 733) mhz. It's a Pentium III core (basically). The X-Box 2 is rumored to run 2 or 3 PPC cores at 2-2.5 ghz. I would expect that even a single 2+ ghz PPC core could emulate at least a 700 mhz x86 without a problem. And don't forget that the graphics on the X-Box 2 will be MUCH faster, so to retain the same frame rate, you have more time (per frame) to prepare the graphics data because the rendering is so fast. That would also help things.

          • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:4, Funny)

            by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @11:24AM (#10257213)
            Exactly. Who cares about a "performance hit" when you are running games that were designed for a system that runs at a small fraction of the speed of the new one? It will be like assigning mundane chores to Marvin the Paranoid Android.

            "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they only want me to run HALO in two-player split-screen mode with the frame-rate of an old nVidia2 card. God, I'm so depressed..."
      • No no no. The biggest caveat is M$ will be at "innovation territory". That's something M$ has never been able to do. They do their best work when they come in second and steal someone else's idea.

        Netscape first - IE second
        Apple Os first - windows second
        Playstation2 first - Xbox second

        • Playstation2 first - Xbox second

          Worldwide GameCube and Xbox are still level pegging.

          Playstation2 first Perhaps you're forgetting #deep breath#; N64, SNES, NES, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genisis, Master System, Jaguar, St, 7800, 2600, Commodore 64, Collecovision, CDi, and a hundred other consoles, successful and unsuccessful since 1970.

          They do their best work when they come in second and steal someone else's idea.

          IE and Windows are perfect examples of their best work : )

        • Netscape was NOT first, I guarantee you that, I used Mosaic much before Netscape made a name for itself. Xerox had a GUI project much before Apple, actually, Apple settled with them on that. The Playstation2 vs XBox "argument" is stupid, it proves absolutely nothing.
        • Netscape first - IE second Apple Os first - windows second Playstation2 first - Xbox second Well I can see what you are not saying each of these 1st are in 1st place but that they came before what MS started and that they can only steal ideas that are already done and use these ideas as their own.

      • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:5, Informative)

        by MarsDefenseMinister ( 738128 ) <dallapieta80@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:23PM (#10252341) Homepage Journal
        Totally different technology. Transitive is binary translation. Connectic is binary interpretation, as in CPU emulation.

        Transitive's technology is more like what Transmeta uses to get various instruction sets to work on their VLIW architecture CPU.

        Should have RTFA.
        • True. But my point was that they aren't NEEDED. MS already has everything that they need to provide backwards compatibility. And even if they didn't provide it, because they have the source to all the libraries and such they could produce an version that was far more optomised and ran faster than a 3rd party company working blind could.

          On a side note, this is like the 3rd thread in the last week or two where you have tried to rip a hole in my comments. Are you following me around or am I just "lucky" :)

          • MS has better things to do than to port all their old stuff. It would be much cheaper to just get this 3rd party company to do their stuff. Everything works with much less effort.

            And, I'm posting to your article because you marked me as a friend. You think I rip holes in your note, but I'm being helpful. I'm just being friendly. Is that OK?
            • Don't mind at all, just wondering.

              As for whether MS will do this or not, I fear that they won't untill a 3rd party (like the, admitidly dubious, company in the article) does it first (or tries). It's too bad because I think backwards comp. would be a great thing.

        • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          They're both dynamic binary translators. Binary translation is a technique used to implement emulation quickly. The slow technique is interpretation.

          The other, more specialized case is static binary translators, but they can never work in all cases (any code that emits code or modifies its own code will fail). There are no comerically significant examples of static binary translation.

      • Re: Virtual Game Station (Score:4, Informative)

        by ghutchis ( 7810 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:19PM (#10253049) Homepage

        Let's not forget that Connectix wrote Virtual Game Station (VGS), a PlayStation emulator for Mac and PC. So they certainly have experience writing game console emulators.

        So yes, they certainly have plenty of in-house experience if all of those Connectix folks are still around.

        -Geoff
    • It was the Linux/x86 version of Quake 3. Running that on a Mac seems impressive enough to me, and fancy that, you've got a native version to compare with.

    • Re:Ignoring the fact... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:02PM (#10252166)
      I went for a job at transitive. They gave us a test to do first, which I completed much faster than the guys I was up against.
      Then they asked for ways to optimise what they did, to which I gave pages of answers, where the others got a few. I had answers they hadn't even thought of, and got thanked for them ;)

      And did I get the job? They wrote to me and said something along the lines that although my technical skills were what they were looking for, they did not feel I would fit in.

      Heh.
      My gf almost killed me for that, for not taking it seriously, when she wanted the job and didn't even get an interview.

    • Anyone remeber Bleem!

  • Good move. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keiferb ( 267153 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:49PM (#10251354) Homepage
    Backward compatibility is the way to go. Nintendo's Game Boy line has benefitted quite a bit by allowing newer machines to play older games. I don't see why it wouldn't also apply to console systems.

    • Re:Good move. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by echeslack ( 618016 )
      Well, I think there is more incentive in portable players, simply because you don't want to carry around all the different platforms. But to me, it doesn't make much difference whether I need to have 1 or 2 additional consoles next to my tv. However, I can see the incentive for really serious gamers who own all the consoles in different generations where necessary.

      • /. mentality (Score:5, Funny)

        by TheHonestTruth ( 759975 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:40PM (#10252463) Journal
        But to me, it doesn't make much difference whether I need to have 1 or 2 additional consoles next to my tv.

        I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but I'd bet dollars to donuts you aren't married.

        -truth

      • Re:Good move. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick.The.Red@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:39PM (#10253198) Journal
        Well, it makes a heck of a difference to me whether I need to have "1 or 2 additional consoles." My house isn't big enough for a console collection.

        If the XB2 won't play my XB1 games, forcing me to have two consoles, then the second one might as well be a PS3 (or even PS2!). If the XB2 won't play my XB1 games then it has to be far and away better than the PS3 or I won't have one (fool me once...). If the XB2 plays XB1 games then I'm almost certain to buy one, regardless of how it stacks up against the PS3, because I really don't want two consoles. I don't know how many others are like me, but it's a large enough market that Sony made the PS2 play PS1 games. I hope Microsoft is smart enough to figure this out.

        • My house isn't big enough for a console collection.

          I've heard this argument before and what I want to know is what house in the world can't handle one extra console? Are you living on the ISS or in a coffin motel or something? I've got my NES, SNES, DC, GC, a DVD player and VCR under my TV and I could easily fit another box or two. It's just a crazy argument.

          • OK, I admit you're right: my house is big enough. But I don't want my electronics scattered through all the rooms. Our familyroom has a typical TV armoire, with the TV above shelves for the other components, CDs, DVDs, and tapes. Currently it holds a reciever, VCR, and Xbox. There's maybe room for one more component, but I'd have to add a shelf and then there may be cooling issues. If I do add one more thing, it would be a PVR (TiVo), and I'd need a new reciever as well, as its inputs are all taken. Add a s

    • It's only an issue because video game developers continue to release "classic" games. If I want to play Mario Brothers, I don't need a GBA SP to do it.

      Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly agree with you that backwards compatibility is the way to go. I don't want that 50 bucks I dropped on a first gen game to be wasted when I want to go play it again.

      • Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly agree with you that backwards compatibility is the way to go. I don't want that 50 bucks I dropped on a first gen game to be wasted when I want to go play it again.

        Here's a novel idea. Keep the first gen console. You buy an XBox 2, but are itching to play Halo again? Pop the disc in your Xbox 1 and play it.

    • it's a no-brainer that it would be a 'good move'.

      however, it doesn't make it necessarely true... or technically feasible(or even legally, given the quite different machines from technical standpoints, with technology coming outside of microsoft so much and from totally different manufacturers/developers with xbox than what will be in the next xbox).

    • Re:Good move. (Score:4, Informative)

      by FortissimoWily ( 703397 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:58PM (#10251802)
      "Backward compatibility is the way to go. Nintendo's Game Boy line has benefitted quite a bit by allowing newer machines to play older games. I don't see why it wouldn't also apply to console systems."
      Thing is, though, it's always been done in-hardware (with no emulation) in the Game Boy line - for example, there's a little switch inside of the GBA cartridge slot, which is pressed only by GB/GBC cartridges - this is how it differentiates between what on-board hardware to use.

      Obviously, with the Game Boy line, the hardware is so small, that it can be added to a console relatively easily - but that's not quite so easy with the home-console market, where between generations, the capabilities of the consoles, and the kinds of processors they use, tend to change drastically, which can sometimes rule out in-hardware and/or emulated backward-compatibility.

  • First post ? maybe ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:57PM (#10251423) Homepage Journal
    ... but thats not the point!

    This is an interesting twist on a previous slashdot discussion.

    However lets put the facts on the table. One of the nice things about Sony's console is the backward compatibility. I am a PS2 person and for me its backward compatibility with PS1 was a definite bonus for me when I bought my next console. Upgrading from PS1 to PS2 for me was a no-brainer, it meant that my old console games would still work on the new box! In retrospect though, it did not neccesarily mean that i still play ps1 games on my ps2, ... quite the contrary, apart from a few un-completed ps1 games the majority of my gaming fun on PS2 has been with PS2 flavor games.

    However I remember thinking and discussing with freinds that if Sony were to make PS2 backward compatible with PS1 they could corner the market... Of course that was before M$ got on the scene. Im not a M$ fan and it will take some huge changes before i feel otherwise, however, from a "make it work" perspective M$ have to make XBOX II backward compatible, even if it is purely from a psychological perspective. People like to beleive that their back-catalogue of game purchases are still viable. Having said that Sony are a generation ahead, PS3 will play all games and beyond. They made some good decisions in the past and it seems that M$ would be silly not to follow suit.

    It seems that transitive have an interesting technology, but what is more eye-opening is that microsoft are building on a platform that isnt x86 and that "has" to be a good thing - no matter how much I hate the swines.
    • Backwards compatibility means exactly ONE thing - You can trade in the old hardware a week or two before launch to get some credit at the local game store. That's it. One the new generation comes out *most* people will play the newer, prettier games. That's what everyone I know does. I mean, if they didn't then why buy the new console?

      So is it a big deal? Not really. Sure it helps marketing the box to the parentals (no wasted investment, even if it's not strictly true) but now days with the average gamer a

  • Yes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:08PM (#10251501)
    Guess who purchased the company who made Virtual PC?

    They already have solid x86-on-PPC emulation code.
    • While it's true that MS can do x86 on PPC, I doubt they bought Virtual PC for the XBox, as it was more of a move to get Mac users to pony up for a Windows XP license to run Windows apps. Now then there's one more thing to consider: the XBox GPU. I really don't think ATI can be bothered to (or can legally) make a NVidia compatible GPU. Remember, CPU isn't everything!

      • Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)

        by p7 ( 245321 )
        Do they have to emulate the Nvidia GPU? I was under the impression that you used DirectX for the rendering and that spoke to the GPU. Since I am not an XBox developer, I don't know how much access you had to the GPU, but I would hazard a guess that you could create a ATI driver that could replace the Nvidia driver to the graphics API. Of course this is all speculation.
      • Nvida would need to release some of its IP in order for ATI to emulate some of the stuff done in the current xbox. Fat chance.
      • Actually, VirtualPC comes with an OEM copy of Windows - hologram and all - so Mac users have been paying MS for licenses. And they were probably charging Connectix more than, say, Dell for those OEM copies. Not a bad deal for Microsoft.

        The Connectix purchase was probably for the engineering team.

  • Hard drive? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cbirdsong64 ( 410584 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:38PM (#10251693)
    If this is true, then MS would probably be forced to include a hard drive in the new system in some form, whether it's built in or a removeable one. Some games use it for caching, and most companies don't bother to optimize Xbox save files for size since size is no object on an Xbox.

  • CPU is not the real problem - the GPU matters (Score:3, Informative)

    by e_AltF4 ( 247712 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:58PM (#10251801)
    Emulating the NVIDIA chipset on ATI hardware won't be that easy.

    AFAIK the DirectX libs & drivers are statically linked into the
    games, so "use DirectX" is no way out in this case.

  • no way (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jakobud ( 224147 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @08:55PM (#10252099)
    This isn't gonna happen for 4 reasons:

    1. Emulating an nVidia gpu that is only a few years old. There just won't be adequate processing power for this... Look at console emulation as it is right now. The best example of modern console emulation is with the original Playstation being emulated pretty well, but still not full speed with all games. The Playstation is more than 10 years old.

    2. Emulation of an nVidia chip would cause some legal problems I believe.

    3. Lack of Hard drive in XBOX 2. This has come straight from M$. How are the old games that use the hard drive going to deal with that?

    4. No White and Black buttons on the XBOX 2 controllers. According to M$, the XBOX 2 controller is going to use all the same buttons and joysticks as the current one, except they are getting rid of the black and white buttons. How are the old games that use those two buttons gonna handle that?? No more Flashlight in Halo I guess :)
    • 1. You don't need full emulation. There are plenty of "wrapper" programs out there that are able to accomplish this feat. For example, a wrapper was made for ATI Radeon that ended up running the NVidia "Dawn" demo better than NVidia cards.

      2. Most likely, and this might be the actual limiting factor.

      3. Significantly larger cheaper and faster flash cards seem to be coming down the pipe. Maybe MS is banking on that and that is why they haven't confirmed the HD for certain because they want to see if they
      • 4. I understand that the XBox 2 controllers will have a second set of shoulder buttons. They'll probably just be mapped to whatever black and white were mapped to.

        I hope they redesign the shape of it a bit. I've been planing Burnout 3 and some other racing games quite heavily on Xbox in recent days. I must say, holding down that right trigger button is not very comfortable, even for a quick 3 minute challenge lap.
        • Don't know about the right trigger, but mashing the boost button made the tip of my thumb go numb for about two days after playing for six hours.

          In other news, that's a pretty rockin' game.

  • reasons MS can't be backwards compatible. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:35PM (#10252436)
    1- they changed CPU architectures.
    2- They changed GPU's and the previous GPU is hevaily heavily copyrighted.
    3- they have only 5-10 games worth playing on Xbox
    4- Emu of 3d graphics w/o glitches is a dream. Even ps2 had glitches and it included the god damn hardware.

    • I was going to be nice, but I see the lusers have been out modding you up and now I just want to start slapping people for their unutterable cluelessness.

      *INSERT CLUE TO CONTINUE*

      1- they changed CPU architectures.

      Okay I am trying hard not to laugh here...

      Even as I type I am running Intel x86 Linux *and* Microsoft Windows (at the same time, but different instances) on my PowerPC PowerBook.

      Not only has this been done many many times (Connectix's Virtual Game Station that allows you to play Playstatio
      • I don't think anyone is saying it would be impossible. But if you are going to have backward compatibility you better make sure it plays as fast as the original. With emulation you take a HUGE hit in speed. You may be running windows you your powerbook (I did also in the past), but to do anything but really basic applications you would encounter a massive speed penalty.

        Virtual Game Station was really cool as well, but there also you took speed hits because of emulation.

        The point being, if its not full
        • With emulation you take a HUGE hit in speed. You may be running windows you your powerbook (I did also in the past), but to do anything but really basic applications you would encounter a massive speed penalty.

          Ah this depends on what you are emulating and what you are emulating on. They are proposing a brand new 'high end' CPU along the lines of a three-core 3.5GHz Power PC chip, to emulate a 700 Mhz low end Intel chip (which was already 'low end' even when the X-Box was released). The gross disparity sho
      • Alright, I'll mention one the gparent forgot.

        5. No hard drive.

        Unless they pull a memory card RAID (doable, but why bother, and way more expensive) that seems to be a deathblow to any reverse compatability rumors.

        Not to troll, but what are your more than 10 excellent xbox exclusive games? Last time I counted Halo was only working on number 2... Splinter Cell has been ported

        Also, having to pay royalities on two video cards might bring the price up a bit.

        • Alright, I'll mention one the gparent forgot.

          5. No hard drive.

          Unless they pull a memory card RAID (doable, but why bother, and way more expensive) that seems to be a deathblow to any reverse compatability rumors.

          I'll be lazy and copy what I've already written about this in another post:

          In the case of saved games just write to a memory card or a virtual drive on line (which I suspect they may be planning on doing). If none is present return the function handler can return a simple out of space error, or
      • Is seems you've been well rebutted. I stand by my assessment and add the fact that there is no HD as one of your repliers mentions. Have you run emulation latley? for 20 year old games, they run flawlessly. on 15 year old games, almost perfect. on the last decade of game, their shit. it'll take another 5-10 years of emu for a pc to play an xbox game full speed via emu.
        • Well rebutted? The original 'reasoning' was quite well debunked as already being shown to be possible (in fact I am doing some of those things now).

          I stand by my assessment and add the fact that there is no HD as one of your repliers mentions

          In the case of saved games just write to a memory card or a virtual drive on line (which I suspect they may be planning on doing). If none is present return the function handler can return a simple out of space error, or trap the result and display it's own message
          • If it's just for cache write you could simply write to a ram disk (If it's relying on swap it's got to be a specific reserved amount, given the X-Box doesn't seem to reserve much for that in the region of 512 MB would be more than sufficient I would have thought, and RAM is dirt cheap and increasingly so).

            you seem to vastly overestimate how much the machine will cost in the end. Their loss leader adn then there is insanity. a ram disk? I highly doubt it. It seems very veyr likly MS has written off the xb
            • That post was so badly written it was hard to read.

              Their loss leader adn then there is insanity. a ram disk? I highly doubt it

              A RAM disk is a software construct not a physical device. It doesn't cost anything.

              The X-Box 2 is apparently due to ship with ~256+ MB RAM, a RAM disk just means taking part of that and using it to emulate a physical disk (as X-Box 1 games would of course only use 64 MB they wouldn't need the rest, leaving plenty left over for a RAM disk).

              The only point to Bc is to preserve t
              • A RAM disk is a software construct not a physical device. It doesn't cost anything.

                The X-Box 2 is apparently due to ship with ~256+ MB RAM, a RAM disk just means taking part of that and using it to emulate a physical disk (as X-Box 1 games would of course only use 64 MB they wouldn't need the rest, leaving plenty left over for a RAM disk).

                I am perfectly aware fo what a ramdisk is, the xbox had 64megs of ram. so of that 256 64 would be reserved just to match the same memory. the emulator won't come witho
  • Er ... did anyone else find it weird that on the www.transitive.com/news.htm website when you try to click on past articles and press releases, it has no link?

    Hey people, we celebrate fool's day on the 1st of April -- not the 14th of September.

  • Last year Wired talked about Xbox 2 backward comp (Score:3, Informative)

    by bippy ( 668525 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @01:16AM (#10253709) Homepage
    Check out the RedAssedBaboon [redassedbaboon.com] article which includes a link to a 2003 Wired article where they matter of factly state that the Xbox 2 will use Virtual PC technology to allow it to be backwards compatible with the Xbox.

  • Who Cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Reapy ( 688651 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @07:33AM (#10255151)
    Why do people need to do all this guesswork. Wait until an official release of the specs, then decide if you want to buy it. How does knowing if it's backwards compatable effect you now? I mean you have a 50/50 shot of being right or wrong, so you don't even get bragging rights for predicting whether it has it ahead of time.

    Well whatever, speculate on.

  • Okay, let's say that it IS backwards compatible (Score:4, Informative)

    by WebGangsta ( 717475 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @11:49AM (#10257458)
    what about the transfer of existing X1 games/settings to the X2?

    The PS2 used the same memory card inputs for PS1 games, so you could easily transfer your game information from one machine to another. I'm going to guess that the PS3 will have a similar memory card slot. Heck, Sony made a good business decision to require the additional purchase of a memory card to save any of their games.

    So we can only hope the following will happen:
    - the X2 will have a hard drive
    - the X2 will allow the transfer of information from the X1 to the X2 (think of all those custom soundtracks you have loaded up!)

    While I can understand that Sony/Microsoft want to head towards online/networked/distributed gaming consoles, there still will be a need for some sort of local data storage. (I'll guess that the PS3 will have a slot for a Memory Stick, allowing you to do digital picture slideshows).

  • If you read through Transitive's site, they state that their software "supports operating system mapping between any two Unix/Linux-like operating systems, as well as mapping between mainframe and any Unix/Linux-like operating systems."

    Last time I checked, neither the Xbox, or the Xbox 2 are/were running Unix-like operating systems...

    -phixxr

    • It also says that it supports ports to Windows though, and to Mac OS X, as those are the two platforms they have demo'd on (and even though Mac OS X is Unix like the display mananger is obviously quite unique and propriatory).

      It's possible there is a 'catch' (and I'm sure there is *some* sort of 'catch') it could be they are using XFree86 on both Windows and Mac OS X. That would seem to make their job a bit easier I would image.

  • Considering how cheap Xboxes are... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @03:34PM (#10259790) Journal
    ... and how much more expensive Xbox 2's are going to be, if you have the money to buy an Xbox 2, and you haven't bought an Xbox to play Xbox games by now, then obviously Xbox games aren't very important to you.

    Many people who cry about this are very obviously PlayStation fans who have no real honest interest in the Xbox/2 to begin with.

    Backwards compatability is always nice, sure. But it's just a bonus. Anyone posing as someone as someone with hundreds of dollars in their wallet that they can blow on an Xbox 2, but haven't bought a dirt-cheap Xbox to play all those games they seem to want to play and play them between NOW and late 2005/early 2006, well, they're just bullshitting.

  • Will it play all my XB1 games i have on the hard drive? :D
  • If it's not backward compatible, what will be the motivation to NOT make the jump to PS3 when it comes out? X Box Next sounds faster than the current X Bob, but that's about it. Doesn't sound like it's going to hold a candle to PS3 and even getting it out the door first (always a dubious concept for Microsoft) might not be encouragement enough.
    • Why is backwards compatibility an incentive to get the Xbox2 in the first place? Presumably to play XBox 1 games. But if you own Xbox1 games, you probably have an Xbox 1 system to play it.

      Personally, I don't give a crap about backwards compatibility. I'll decide which one is better, Xbox 2 or PS3, and buy that one. Whether or not the PS3 plays my existing PS2 games will have exactly ZERO bearing on my decision.

  • http://www.transitive.com/gameing_oem.htm [transitive.com] the games section of their site shows a model with games from an old system (x86 in the example) to a new game system (ppc in the example). x86 to ppc could only be for xbox, the gamecube is ppc already and the ps2 (im pretty sure) is not x86.
  • is it just me or does the whole article sound like complete vaporware... i mean who believes someone showing of a linux powerpc quake3 running for being kind of "emulated"

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