Microsoft Clarifies Backward Compatibility Stance 85
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."
at this rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Meantime, tons of popular XBox games (Platinum Hits) aren't supported on the 360. As far as native games go, if I don't want to have a chick fight, drive, or play a sport, I don't have much reason to turn on my 360 at all.
Either one would please me: extensive backwards compatibility or a worthwhile native library. Right now the 360 offers neither. I just hope one or the other happens before I get bored with Burnout.
Re:at this rate (Score:1, Insightful)
Why did you buy a Xbox 360 then?
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
Re:at this rate (Score:2, Interesting)
Fight Night
Call of Duty
Oblivion.
Re:at this rate (Score:2, Funny)
I always thought the reasons were...
No girl
No friends*
No life
* except maybe a few other game addicts (many of which you probably have never met IRL)
Although in such a case, reasons and consequences usually are hard to distinguish.
So mod me Flamebait... That does not keep you from knowing it is all too often true!
Re:at this rate (Score:5, Insightful)
- You're under 18, and have plenty of spare time
- Your friends come over and play with you
- Your girlfriend also plays
OR
- You're still learning to handle girls, but can take the distraction
So, put that in perspective. I was a Spectrum addict when I was 12-16 (and friends came over), I was a 386 addict up to 18, and I'm 28 now, with my 3rd long term relationship (and hopefully the last one) and an healthy dose of attempts in between.
Playing games is good for you.
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
Re:at this rate (Score:2)
(Not that I want to brag about my fiancee complaining once that I don't play enough Oblivion, or anything...
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
If there were better legacy support, the odds would be much improved that there's a game out there we can both enjoy. For instance, I'm excited that the upcoming update will let us play Lego Star Wars.
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
Re:at this rate (Score:2, Insightful)
I hear that. If only they'd release games like Oblivion, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter or Hitman: Blood Money. Maybe they just need to come out with something like Kameo, Gun, Final Fanasy XI or a Tomb Raider game.
For anyone without a nice PC gaming rig, the Xbox 360 probably has something to make a gamer turn it on. For the people
Re:at this rate (Score:4, Informative)
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)
Re:at this rate (Score:2)
Of course, the truth is that had I never owned an Xbox I wouldn't even consider buying a 360 right now (I still haven't) and would instead just buy the
Re:at this rate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:at this rate (Score:2)
Oblivion
Runs horribly slow compared to PC version... (loading...)
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Struck me as too dark to play during the daytime, but I didnt play it long.
G.R.A.W
Ok I guess. I don't much like FPS's anymore, they're all the same.
Hitman
Haven't played this one, but the series have been going downhill so I'm unlikely to bother.
Kameo
Sucked. Really, really incredibly lame.
Gun
Sucked *hardcore*
Final Fanasy XI
Haven't played, admittedly.
Tomb Raider
Sucked
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
Re:at this rate (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:1)
Hold on a sec. CoD2, Oblivion, and Tomb Raider are all available on PC (Tomb Raider being availble on all the consoles). Wik is also availble on PC. Geometry wars can be supplanted by this guy [asahi-net.or.jp] (and all those are opensourced). Kameo isn't all that different from what Rare did in the N64 days.
I don't own a High-def TV, so my 3.5-year-old PC can basically match the graphical output of the 360. The games so far have basically been Xbox++, with higher-def textures. The games I listed at the top pretty mu
Re:at this rate (Score:2)
That being said, I take issue with your assessments of Kameo and GW. If we only count games as quality games if they're completely dissimilar to other games that are available, the worldwide library of quality games for all platforms ever drops by several orders of magnitude.
And, that being said, I won't make a case for the 360's
That is exactly why people harp about BC... (Score:2)
Re:at this rate (Score:1)
2037 it is.
YES!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:YES!! (Score:2)
*ducks*
Re:Emulation? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Emulation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes.
The compatability isn't there, but unlike Microsoft, unofficial emulator developers don't have specs and have to reverse engineer things. The speed is there though. Your generation generalization is really not a factor this time, since processor speeds grew by a signifigantly higher factor than they did during any previous console generation.
I think you would probably be surprised how few special cases Microsoft has in their Xbox
Re:Emulation? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Emulation? (Score:2)
Re:Emulation? (Score:2)
XBOX Emulator? The XBOX is for the most part an x86 machine running off of a modified win2k kernel. I'm pretty sure someone's working on that right now to make a computer function exactly like an XBOX (XBOXOS? - the next Windows?)
Gamecube? Well, I don't know about that - has anyone emulated the Pana
Re:Emulation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Emulation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Emulation? (Score:2)
Re:Emulation? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm happy so far (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm happy so far (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:I'm happy so far (Score:2)
They had good reasons (Score:2)
Re:They had good reasons (Score:2)
Re:I'm happy so far (Score:2)
Short version... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Short version... (Score:3, Funny)
That's OK, I can never find a retailer that carries it.
And by golly... (Score:1, Funny)
Microsoft Cares (Score:2, Funny)
>Boy, do we care about backward compat[ibility]...
And, we will tell you how much you should care about it too. We know exactly how much is perfect. You will be happy with that amount of compatability.
Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2, Insightful)
Similar to the Linux ports of Doom and stuff (port the engine, use the graphics from the original disc)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
If it was a compatible chipset, then MS would've simply included the code for the original xbox bootup sequence and transparently handled backwards compatibility.
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2)
i don't have a 360 so i don't know how it works exactly but if you have to download and update for your games to work.. they can't be too small and would eat the hdd's space - i don't know exactly but i think it would have been better for them to just have a straight generic emulater
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2)
The 360 doesn't seem to have enough power in the right areas to emulate a XBox1, I'm sure Microsoft tried to write a generic emulato
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:3, Insightful)
Older versions of the port stand at about 8MB.
Many games actually need very little in the way of code, the greatest majority of the game comes from the textures and meshes which populate the worlds.
Remember, most modern games are based upon still valid functioning code from easily 20 years ago, the algorythms haven't changed much at all, the rules are still in place.
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:2)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
Re:Does backwards compatability = Recompile? (Score:1)
Also, if they were recompiling the code to native PPC, they'd need the original source code of every game released for the Xbox. I seriously doubt this would happen, as it would require special legal contracts with every developer and publisher who made a game for the Xbox.
Also also, are you suggesting that the Xbox compatability team would be able to fix bugs
"concerned" = "worried about" || "care" (Score:2, Interesting)
What he meant was that they weren't worried about BC.
What people thought he meant was that they don't care about BC.
Broken Backwards Compatability (Score:1, Informative)
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
What's really going on. (Score:2)
Somewhere, a bunch of programmers are busily recompiling x86 code for PowerPC and looking for endian problems. It's a routine headache. Remember, the original Xbox is quite vanilla; it's basically a PC with an NVidia graphics processor running a stripped-down Windows 2000. In fact, most Xbox games can be run on PCs with the development environment (usually VC++), if you have the tools and files to build the game. (No, fanboys, that doesn't mean you can run the retail game on your PC.)
I wonder if the
Microsoft, not too clever these chaps (Score:2)
I mean they promised B/C on high selling titles and then released it with a fairly piss poor list besides a few games and have mostly ignored it since.
Microsoft want to promote the X360 in Japan and so far it's going like shit, the least they can do is to make as many games b/c as possible, it's a damn logicial thing to do because places where the X360 isn't doing so well, at least they can add the bulletpoint of b/c to convince current Xbox 1 owners to grab it or to convince people
Re:Microsoft, not too clever these chaps (Score:2)
Who bought the HD-less 360? why? do you regret it?
Re:Microsoft, not too clever these chaps (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft, not too clever these chaps (Score:2)
Nostalgia? (Score:1)
Re:Nostalgia? (Score:3, Funny)
Still no way of transferring saves (Score:2)
I'm worried that Sony may try to pull the same stunt. Like the 360, the PS3 is missing memory card slots for the previous generation, so saved games could be a problem there as well.
Is it hard? (Score:2)
Fat Kid: "Yeah! I love the Xbox 360."
You: "Eh, I'm more of a Sony fan."
Fat Kid: "Oh, Yeah! I love Sony waaay more than Microsoft."
MS: We will make every Xbox game compatible on our horribly kludged backwards compatibility.
Fans: Woo hoo! I'm buying an Xbox 360 then instead of an Xbox since I get the best of both worlds.
MS: Um, screw this, it's
Re:Is it hard? (Score:1)
Typical Slashdot Reader: Yeah! Screw Microsoft!
MS: We are still working on backwards compatibility, even if our studies show most people don't care.
Typical Slashdot Reader: Yeah! Screw Microsoft!
MS: We are giving away free money.
Typical Slashdot Reader: Yeah! Screw Microsoft!
MS: We just found a cure for HIV.
Typical Slashdot Reader: Yeah! Screw Microsoft!
Re:Is it hard? (Score:2)
They have made it quite clear that they have no real interests in innovation and moving gaming forward in any way but throu
Re:Is it hard? (Score:1)
Re:Is it hard? (Score:2)
If you look at your
Re:Is it hard? (Score:1)
Superior hardware, XBOX Live, Out-of-box experience, and game selection were all successful.
That is entirely subjective.
Geometry Wars is one of the most successful XBOX Live ARCADE releases ou
Can it play my backups? (Score:1)