Microsoft Clarifies Backward Compatibility Stance

kukyfrope writes "Peter Moore, Head of Interactive Entertainment at Microsoft, has clarified previous comments about gamers not being concerned with backward compatibility on the Xbox 360, claiming his words were 'misconstrued' and reiterating Microsoft's goal to make every Xbox game backward compatible. 'It's quite simply not that we don't care about backward compat[ibility]. Boy, do we care about backward compat[ibility]... We're going to get darn close to that stated goal of every title done,' Moore promised."

Re:Emulation?

[tepples]

couldn't something be done similar to how pirates create those emulation programs to play snes, etc onto a computer? Or is the architecture so complex that such a one-to-one conversion isn't possible.

That, and large parts of the classic Xbox architecture are patented by NVIDIA, which is unwilling to license them to Microsoft for use in an ATI based console at any price short of 51 percent of market cap. Besides, do you see working PS2, GameCube, or Xbox emulators on modern PCs? Emulation generally needs a gap of two console generations to work well, outside of special cases that can be high-level-emulated. Microsoft's goal in Xbox-on-360 emulation is to make each game such a special case.

Short version...

[larsoncc]

Major Nelson's interview of Peter Moore said that they were essentially looking to provide more updates in the next week, and that two of the new titles for backCompat would be Lego Star Wars and Doom 3. There will be about 20 titles in this update.

Re:at this rate

[Control Group]

I want BC as much as anyone and more than many (my XBox is on indefinite loan to a friend of mine), but don't sell the library of 360-native games quite so short. CoD2, Kameo, Oblivion, and Tomb Raider are all quality titles that don't fall into the categories you named. And if you expand to XBLA, you can toss Geometry Wars, Marble Blast Ultra, and Wik on the list as fantastic games.

It's not exactly a selection measured in Libraries Of Congress (or even VW Beetles), but there are good games that aren't sports/driving/fighting out there.

Re:at this rate

[Control Group]

Compared to the PS2 at the same point in its life, the 360's game lineup is kick-ass...
Not to post contrariwise to what I already said in this thread, but - while you're certainly right in terms of native games, the PS2 did have the advantage of playing all (or at least, virtually all) PS1 games. It made the game lineup seem meatier than it actually was, but that's really all that matters: how many (good) games can you sit down at your console and play?

(Note that this comes from a guy who neither had nor wanted a PS1 or a PS2)

Broken Backwards Compatability

[Anonymous Coward]

This is entirely pointless seing as many games ALREADY ON THE LIST don't work correctly and you can't copy your data over.

Halo 2 has various glitches that slow the frame rate to 5FPS, or the screen will screw up and show an overlay of the previous level while you are trying to play.

Forza either runs too fast or too slow and the FMV sequences play in a reverse/negative pallete (its all blue and green and purple) and play all screwed up on my X360.

Also since you cant copy your data forward it really reduces the usefulness of BC. All the weeks and months spent on Forza building up skills/stats/cars/money etc are effectively gone unless I want to play it on the old Xbox.

There are other examples but these 2 are the first that came to mind.

Re:Emulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken like someone who doesn't own a 360. If you read up on the whole BC thing, you'll find that most games ARE special cases, which is why the emulation list is 200 some games long whereas the list of xbox titles is closer to the 600-800 title range...