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XBox (Games)

Xbox 360 Backwards Compatible? 99

Posted by Zonk from the i-certainly-hope-so dept.
Gamespot is reporting that, on the OurColony.net 360 footage, current generation Xbox titles are viewable being played on the 360 console. From the article: "There is also a screenshot of the new Xbox Live dashboard with the words 'Xbox 1 Zone' clearly marked and an icon of the current Xbox title Fable. Finally, a screenshot of the forthcoming Xbox Live Marketplace clearly shows Halo 2 maps being offered for download. However, while such shots imply backward compatibility, such functionality is not yet official. Microsoft executives have said themselves they cannot address the issue until next Monday's media event at E3--at the earliest."
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Xbox 360 Backwards Compatible? More

Xbox 360 Backwards Compatible?

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  • Direct X (Score:2, Informative)

    by biryokumaru ( 822262 ) *
    They say that DirectX is entirely backwards compatible, but I tried to play Deus Ex: Invisible War the other day (which was built around DirectX 8.1) and it kept crashing. A little googling showed that DX:IW won't run with DirectX 9. I'd have to reformat and install everything with DirectX 8.1 if I wanted to play that game. (I'm aware of alternatives to reformatting, but thats not really my point)

    How much you wanna bet that XBox will be as backwards compatible as DirectX?

    • I'm no expert but I also wonder how games built and often optimized for a totally different architecture (gpu, cpu, etc.) will be able to run?

      Can it all be emulated?
      • Definatly. Though the overhead of emulataion is incredibly high, especially when the architecture you're emulating bears absolutly no resemblence to the one the will be crunching the numbers.

        Only time will tell as to whether this a well placed PR red-herring, or, if infact the X360 is backwards compatible.

        I have my doubts

        • Re:Direct X (Score:1, Troll)

          by aweraw ( 557447 ) *
          $prev_post =~ s/bear/bare/g
        • That is true, but if the specs that are out on the 360 are true, I would think that it should have more than enough power to emulate the original. I'm not 100% sure but I am pretty sure the original had a 800 MHz Celeron processor, and the new process should be able to handle that easily.
          • The original has a 733 MHz custom-built Celeron-like processor. However, even a top-of-the-line G5 running Virtual PC can only emulate a 600 MHz or so PIII without 3D video acceleration. I think it's highly unlikely that the performance gap between Apple's offering and Microsoft's is enough to make up for those deficiencies.

            • mod parent up (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Neuticle ( 255200 )
              The Xbox360 might be able to emulate a 733Mhz PIII ok, but the first Xbox(180 degrees?) is MUCH more than just that one chip - It's a tightly integrated GPU-chipset-memory-CPU setup with LOTS of specific hooks and tweaks and Nvidia copy-righted whiz-bang that games were highly optimized to.

              The Xbox360 CPU must emulate the whole machine, not just the PIII part. The Nvidia graphics stuff will not be able to be offloaded onto a very different ATI chip, for legal and technical reasons. The whole platform must
        • the PPC was designed for emulating. MS bought virtual PC a few years back, and has tight control over the XBox hardware, so there's less variation than with many emulated systems. The XBox features 3 PPCs (6 hardware threads) running at 3.2Ghz. Emulation is certainly possible.

    • Re:Direct X (Score:3, Informative)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 )
      DX:IW runs fine on my system with DirectX 9.0c (GeForce 6600GT).

      So do a lot of other older games.
      • true, dx:iw runs on dx9, i think it always has, too.

        but.. .. ... dx:iw is horribly buggy so sometimes(mostly) it doesn't run ok(smoothly) on any system..

      • I'm not sure why this is "Informative" if it doesn't at all apply to Xboxes. The Xbox does not use vanilla DirectX 8.1, there is no reason to assume that the 360 uses an unmodified version of DirectX.
    • Huh? I didn't even play DX:IW until I had DX9. Suspect its some driver you have, not the DX version. If you want incompatibility, try going back to stuff from before DX5, most of it won't work at all (I miss Rocket Jockey). I'm not even sure that DDraw And D3D were separate then.
    • They say that DirectX is entirely backwards compatible, but I tried to play Deus Ex: Invisible War the other day (which was built around DirectX 8.1) and it kept crashing

      Pish, I played that game when it was brand new ON DirectX 8.1 and the damn thing still crashed.

      It's another example of a rushed-out-the-door poorly coded piece of a game. And believe me, you aren't missing much. It was a travesty compared to its predecessor.

      I'm guessing that software companies with any code developers worth a damn

  • Good news all around for the Xbox if this is true. At least it will put off a lot of the nay-sayers here on Slashdot. (Or not.) ;)

  • But (dare I ask) .. why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by justin_saunders ( 99661 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:48AM (#12527599) Homepage
    Who cares? If you love your old XBOX games that much, just keep it and play your old XBOX games on it. This feature seems to be just another "tick" for the marketdroids to put in the box.

    I ask this in all seriousness. The only time I used it on my PS2 was to see if it actually worked (It did! yay! ..er now I'll go play GTA3).

    So is there a good reason for 90% of people to care about backward compatibility?

    ps I don't own an XBOX yet so I'm trying to be objective here.

    • Re:But (dare I ask) .. why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:57AM (#12527635)
      Who cares? If you love your old XBOX games that much, just keep it and play your old XBOX games on it. This feature seems to be just another "tick" for the marketdroids to put in the box.

      Believe me, for people like me, with seven gaming systems currently plugged into the home theatre system, reducing that number by one, especially when that one system is a system as space-hungry as the Xbox is worth something. If it doesn't cost much to make that possible, terrific.

    • Re:But (dare I ask) .. why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jarlsberg ( 643324 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:57AM (#12527636) Journal
      So is there a good reason for 90% of people to care about backward compatibility?
      I rarely ever play PS1 games on my PS2, but that's because IMHO there are so few good PS1 games. The Xbox has quite a few good games that I could see myself playing some time down the road, so it's good if I don't have to keep both Xboxes plugged in (or at hand) at all times. 'Course, my xbox is modded and I use it for media playback all the time, so it's unlikely I'll part with it until the Xbox2 can be modded :).

      Nintendo is another good example. The Nintendo DS and the Gameboy Advance can load just about every game cartridge produced for the Nintendo gameboy line, and I really like that. You get a better playing experience on the Gameboy Advance SP than on the non backlit Gameboy/Gameboy color and you don't need to keep the old handhelds around (though I still do it, for nostalgia's sake).

      So, yeah, I think there are several good reasons for backwards compatibility. :)

      • There are a lot of real gems among the PS1 games. The Spyro series were the precursers to Ratchet and Clank, there were some really corny racing games, some decent horror/thriller games, etc.
      • The DS can't play Game Boy original-system games, which is a shame, since in my opinion the Game Boy version of Tetris is the best ever. I keep an SP around just to play it.

        • Re:But (dare I ask) .. why? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @09:58AM (#12528917)
          Most people don't realize this, but the GBA had backwards compatibility with GB, SGB, and GBC games by including a Gameboy Color on a chip. The older gameboy carts are larger and have a different voltage, so when they are in, the hardware activates the GBC on a chip. When GBA games are in the slot, it activates the GBA circuitry. Both can't be active at the same time. Since many people like to use Flash carts for the GBA, so that they can make a game playlist of their favorite titles, similar to how an MP3 player lets you make a music playlist of your favorite tunes, all without lugging around the original media... work began on an unofficial, yet high-quality Gameboy emulator for the Gameboy Advance, so that people could use a GBA flash cart to include a playlist of their favorite GBA titles as well as their favorite GBC, SGB, and GB titles.

          Little did people know at the time that the GBC-on-a-chip would be done away with in Nintendo's next portable. Hence the Gameboy emulator for the GBA became even more important.

          So to play old (non-Advance) Gameboy games on a DS, get a GBA flash cart [linker4u.com]. Put Goomba [webpersona.com] (GB emulator for the GBA) on it, and then you can play GB and SGB games on your DS. Of course, with the SGB games will play as if they are in a black and white Gameboy and not a Super Gameboy, so you won't get the Super Gameboy enhancements, such as more colors, borders, and other special features.

          There are many other uses for these flash carts than piracy. Rip your own games and make your own multi-carts of your favorite titles. I have a multi-cart containing my favorite NES titles along with my favorite GB titles. So one little cart can fit hundreds of great games. That way I can have a variety of great games (puzzle, action, rpg, racing, shooter, etc) without lugging around handfuls of carts.

          One last note. The Goomba page I linked above is the official site, but it lacks the most recent version, which can be found at the author's personal page [passagen.se]. You can also find the latest version of his NES emulator for the GBA.

          Funny how an unofficial NES emulator existed for the GBA long before Nintendo got around to re-releasing their classic series for the GBA. Too little, too late, Nintendo. I still have over 100 NES carts in my closet. I am not about to pay full price for them all over again, and yes I still enjoy playing them.
    • It provides incentive for people to buy the console at launch. Currently it seems Microsoft does not have a true AAA title like Halo to launch with the Xbox 360. If people know that they can play Halo 2 (and maybe with better graphics) as well as the rest of the the Xbox's library of games they are likely to think they will be able to use their new purchase a lot more than just with the maybe 16 games that come out at the time of release. This is especially important with the Xbox 360, as supposedly the dev
      • It provides incentive for people to buy the console at launch. Currently it seems Microsoft does not have a true AAA title like Halo to launch with the Xbox 360. If people know that they can play Halo 2 (and maybe with better graphics) as well as the rest of the the Xbox's library of games they are likely to think they will be able to use their new purchase a lot more than just with the maybe 16 games that come out at the time of release.

        This reasoning makes no sense, but it's the reasoning I see posted
        • It is an incentive if Halo 2 might have better graphics possibly because of the Xbox 360's improved hardware (it has been rumored). Also, you would get all the extra features of Xbox Live (which I assume would work with the other version). Generally it is a pain to have to switch between consoles, unless the person has some sort of switching device. With the Xbox 360, because games for the original Xbox will still be released after it has launched it is possible that people will want to get these other gam
        • You seem to be assuming that everyone already owns the original Xbox. Backwards compatibility is for people who don't have the first system. I only have a GameCube now, and if I decide to buy the new Xbox, it would be nice to be able to play the already large library of games. You're right that it doesn't matter to current Xbox owners, but that isn't who the feature is aimed at.
          • Fair enough.

            But for the folks who don't own the original console - why not release originals re-compiled as budget titles or bonus discs ala the WindWaker/Ocarina of time deal?

            Just seems dumb.
            • But for the folks who don't own the original console - why not release originals re-compiled as budget titles or bonus discs ala the WindWaker/Ocarina of time deal?

              Because the Ocarina of Time for GameCube doesn't help me when I want to play Goldeneye. It's really not the same thing at all. A key aspect of backwards campatibility is that the system instantly has a massive library. If you've ever owned a system in the first few months of its life, you should appreciate this feature. In order to match backwa
        • Um, the sega Genesis was backwards compatible with the Sega Master System [with an adaptor, although the Genesis had the Master System Z80 proc in it, so the adaptor just matched pinouts]. I'm pretty sure most people consider the Genesis to be successful. It could also be argued that the Gamecube was backwards compatible with GB/C/A carts.
      • Perfect Dark Zero, done by the kids who originally set the bar for console first person shooters with Goldeneye on the N64. I don't think Halo is that great, but I love playing it with my friends, and it's what all my friends have. I think Perfect Dark Zero is going to be a much better game, plus it'll be the launch title everyone gets and plays.
        • Without a doubt it will probably be a good game, but launching a console you usually want to start with something that people already know. The Xbox has built a large audience of casual gamers who really only know Halo. Perfect Dark Zero may be a great shooter, but it lacks the Halo name, and thus will probably lose some people unless Microsoft pushes it really hard.
          • You forget that when the Xbox was launced, Halo wasn't a "name" either... it had a good reputation going in, and Bungie was known as a good studio but it wasn't a slam dunk name like Mario or Zelda.
          • I agree that a good launch title is one that the consumers already know, but this thought presents the idea that Halo is the only title worthy of "launch status" for the 360. It makes the console sound lacking, to say that only one series from it's entire collection is worthy of such status.

            And further...

            That "large audience of casual gamers who really only know Halo" that you speak of. This is a bad thing. The console exists for one reason, then? No, I'm going to side with reason and say that you're
        • That's kind of misleading. PD0 is being made by the same company that made the orginal Perfect Dark and Golden Eye. However, the actual development team that made the game has since left Rare and most of them wound up at Free Radical.
    • Who cares? If you love your old XBOX games that much, just keep it and play your old XBOX games on it. This feature seems to be just another "tick" for the marketdroids to put in the box.

      For people who don't already have an Xbox, backwards compatibility is a big selling point. It means that instead of a mere 20+ games there are potentially 1000s of games at launch.

    • Who cares? If you love your old XBOX games that much, just keep it and play your old XBOX games on it.

      It's so simple, i'm surpised you didn't just realise it yourself... Ok, sure, if you are only selling to the exact same people as bought the first XBox then maybe you could just tell them to all plug in thier old XBoes and play... But what about new users? Are you expecting to sell to them?

      I mean, Imagine yourself as a new user... you just boughtt a very expensive XBox 360 and bought your one *very*

    • Because the incremental cost of providing emulation is probably compensated by the increased sales resulting from that emulation. It gives the console a huge initial boost in games, it gives future XBox owners access to fun games that haven't been remade for the 360, and it provides "investment protection" for existing XBox owners who don't want to have both consoles hooked up.

      I'd bet the market for PS1 games on the PS2 was huge. I'm responsible for at least a half-dozen PS1 game purchases, which multipl
    • I own an xbox. Backwards compatibility is important to me. I don't want 2 consoles connected to my tv. Bottom line is, if its not hooked up to the tv, its not getting played.
      If I can't play my current xbox games on 360, then I might consider buying the ps3 over the 360. I'd definately wait longer to buy the 360 just to see what the ps3 will have to offer.
      Most games come out on both systems anyway, so at that point, both are pretty equal (technical merits aside)

      For MS, why would the want to give their cu
    • Well, I had an XBox briefly, while I was traveling alot for work and wanted to play some games and watch DVDs in a hotel. I bought it around launch time. About 8 months later I returned home and back to my gaming PC and decided that I didn't really need to XBox (plus I wasn't, at that point, impressed with the games at all).

      Now, I am looking at this last year or so worth of XBox games, and the MUCH improved Live! games that are available, and am impressed. I have also switched to a Mac, so my gaming select
    • Who cares? If you love your old XBOX games that much, just keep it and play your old XBOX games on it

      But what happens when your original XBOX breaks, which seems to happen with certain XBOXes on a fairly regular basis. If you look at the article http://news.ft.com/cms/s/08fce29a-c334-11d9-abf1-0 0000e2511c8.html [ft.com] it seems that Nvidia has stopped making the original XBOX chips, and I would assume this would stop Microsoft from being able to continue manufacture the origional XBOX. While I know this isn
    • I've been considering buying an Xbox, but if the Xbox 360 is backwards compatible, then why buy both? It'll save me money by not wasting the $150 now. I, for one, will be glad to see backwards compatibility (like, I'm sure, many more, if not 90%).

  • Speculation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:10AM (#12527681) Journal
    I do wonder if the backwards compatability with the Xbox 360 had anything to do with their purchase of connectix in february\march 2003(which was mainly for virtual PC and to be able to sell windows to mac users).
    It looks like the plans were already well underway by that time to use PowerPC based procesors in the Xbox 360 .
    I know most of the VirtualPC codebase is mac specific , but alot of it could be adapted for the purposes of the xbox 360.
    I still don't see how they will manage it without some form of speed hit , if they do manage atall.
    well , we shall have to wait and find out .
    • yeah, that would make sense since you will need an emulator quick for the xbox 360 project, but keep in mind when MS bought VPC then, they said it was for enterprise customers that have legacy software that would only work in NT4 so emulator is the only option if you are depolying Windows Server 2003.
  • This HelloGamer article [hellogamer.com] has a supposed leaked XBox Live survey that confirms backwards compatibility.

    My guess is that Microsoft will do what Sony did with the PS2: if a game works, it works; if not, tough titties. (I have had plenty of PS1 games freeze on my PS2.)
    • That survey simply stated that "Xbox Live 2 will be fully compatible with Xbox Live 1"

      It didn't mention specific titles or gameplay, so I'm guessing it was referring to friend lists and the like...
      • "If you are already an Xbox Live subscriber through the original Xbox system, you can continue to play against gamers who are on Live through Xbox 2--as long as they are playing a current generation Xbox game.

        Xbox Live is an online gaming service that works across both the current Xbox system and the future Xbox 2. You will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles. If you are playing an Xbox game on Live you will be able to compete against people playing that same game on Xbox
  • Does anyone benefit from backwards compatibility for any console?

    I drives up the price of the new console and it vastly reduces the potential resale value of the old one.

    The only group of people that will benefit is the people who did not own the previous console, but do the new one, and are intrested in buying games for the old console (which will also drop in price alot slower than if backwards compatibility was not included)

    Except for portable consoles (where it is invonveinient to carry around a

    • The number of people who didn't buy the previous generation is larger than the number of people who did buy one. If you don't do backwards compatibility, you're missing out on a LOT of sales of older titles to people who are just getting into this generation.

      I got a PS2, but had not bought a console prior - no PS1. However, because the PS2 could play PS1 games, I wound up buying quite a few of them because, despite having older graphics, they really had quite good gameplay.

      For the 360, backwards compatibi
    • The only group of people that will benefit is the people who did not own the previous console, but do the new one, and are intrested in buying games for the old console

      There, you answered your own question. I don't suppose starting a post with "Does anyone benefit?" and almost immediately outlining exactly who benefits seemed like a red flag that your post was meaningless did it? No? Didn't think so.

      Yes, I fall into that category. There are tons of XBox1 games I would like to play, but I have decided t

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @09:15AM (#12528717)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Sorry bud, if I had any more mod points I would most definately mod you up. This is precisely what I was thinking about. Why try and emulate something if all you have to do is update a game across a broadband connection? This is exactly what Steam does, and Microsoft is sure that all connections on Xbox Live are Broadband.

      I have a feeling they might do something like this, because it would just make more sense than emulating everything on the Xbox side. Hopefully all the games will follow suit and be rec
    • That's a very good idea. I think that it's highly possible a combination of the two would be used. They may included some emulation in the 360, enough so that alot of game work pretty much of the time. Especially older games that may not have been as demanding or used certain difficult to emulate functions. Then for other games, especially very popular ones, they could release new binaries as you suggest.

      Another benefit would be for VERY popular games, the re-released binary could be a $5 (or free :) down
    • Actually, I learned at an MS infomational talk back when the Xbox came out that all Xbox games have the entire OS on the game disc, and that is used to load up when the game is inserted in the drive. It's a lot like inserting an OS install disc in your computer and having it boot into the installer (or something like knoppix where it just boots into the OS). Your proposed solution works ok, until you think about how there are hundreds (thousands?) of Xbox titles out there, and each one would need updated li
  • compatible:

    1: Halo 2

    2: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

    3: Unreal Championship 2

    4: Forza Motorsport

    5: The xbox specs are a 733 mghz P3 processor with 64 MB of RAM, while the xbox 360 specs are 3 3.2 GHZ IBM processor with 512 MB of RAM.

    How can they not be able to make a decent emulator with that kind of technological buffer?

  • Xbox games are written in a high-level language, typically C++, and they are written towards a high-level API for graphics, sound, user input, etc. If Microsoft decides to change the hardware, the API and language stay mostly the same, so porting to the new console is a relatively easy task as the feature set on the new Xbox is a strict super set of the feature set on the old Xbox.

    Most people don't know this, but the original Xbox went through several revisions, which made significant changes to the firmw
    • Are you implying they're going to rerelease old Xbox games compiled for the Xbox 360? This seems highly unlikely.
      • They don't need to rerelease; they could just deliver versions recompiled for easier emulation over the Live connection, when someone slaps in an old disc. Or the system might ship with copies of all the executables that need to be changed.

        Newer titles could be handled more easily by just including 'easier' versions in a special directory on the disc.

        That having been said, this is all highly unlikely; the amount of effort required to track down all of those titles and modify them as necessary would not o
  • I haven't owned a console since the last sega genesis (have been a pc gamer since). But, I won't want to miss out on the next generation of consoles (I have money now). My reasons to want backwards compatibility are:

    1.So I can play what I missed (I've seen others play) from the xbox 1 generation: Fable, Unreal Championship 2, Shenmue II , etc.

    2.On launch, xbox games will be much cheaper and abundant than xbox 360 games.

  • With a controller that doesn't contain the black and white buttons found on the Xbox Controller-S (and nothing added to replace them), how would one be able to play a game designed with those buttons in mind?

    To me, that was always the major clue as to whether the system would allow you to play original Xbox games. Of course, the controller design could be slightly changed, but as it stands now, all other arguments aside, I don't see how it could happen.

    • Re:Controller... (Score:3, Informative)

      by alphaseven ( 540122 )
      There are two new shoulder buttons located above the triggers on the 360 controller, they could probably serve as the black and white buttons.
  • I am sure they will figure out a way to deal with the nVidia legal issue.

    Xbox360 will be backwards compatible for:
    1. They want to sell a lot of xbox360 before PS3 launches.

    2. Many good games are coming for the current xbox before the holiday season (I am waiting for Lockdown, Godfather). They want to sell those games also. They don't want to give a choice to parents between a $150 system that can keep a child occupied for at least 1 year with the current library and a $298+ system that has a few ga
  • People have posted about how many users don't care about backwards compatibility, well guess what? microsoft does and its target base do. 1)Microsoft always has been losing money on the Xbox hardware itself, but the software, not only from their own games(Halo2) but also from royalties that they get from the developer, they make money from the games. If they make it backwards compatible, they can kill the production of hardware, and yet still keep getting money from game sales. 2)Microsoft wants to reach in
    • Opps, Got the numbers wrong.. Sony PlayStation 2 has an install base of 30.8 million units in North America, compared to 12.1 million units for the Xbox.(IDC) Worldwide? Tell me if you find it. The point remains, Xbox has 1/3 the market of the PS2, and is about equal to Nintendo's Gamecube. Microsoft wants to expand.
  • Can I still play my DDR on it? I know that is hooks up to the controller port, so if the '360 is wireless, can I still play? That would really tick me off.
  • My guess is no or limited backwards compatilibity. I think if it was fully backward compatible they would have annouced it around their craptastic MTV launch. My guess is they want to hold off on the backwards compatibily annoucement as long as possible so it doesn't take down any of the buzz until enough has been generated that it won't make a big impact. Hell, they might even wait until preorders are in before annoucing it. At best they might have backwards compatibilty for new games that used a certain
  • Xbox Live dashboard with the words 'Xbox 1 Zone' clearly marked and an icon of the current Xbox title Fable.

    Seems like that might just mean that XBox Live will maintain backward compatibility for people who still have XBox1.

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