Xbox 360 Updates Social Features, Back Compat 112
Microsoft is gearing up for another big update to Xbox Live, and soon they'll be offering a friend of a friend feature that will allow users to peruse their friends' friend lists. It's a voluntary service, and is gated by your age to avoid any parental fears. If you'd rather turn it off ahead of time, they already have a dedicated site set up for that purpose. (Gamertag login required.) That update will be dropping on December 4th. Relatedly, they're also rolling out a whole bunch of new backwards compatability options for your old Xbox games. Highlights include support for: Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, Indiana Jones And The Emperors Tomb, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Syberia II, The Bard's Tale, Worms 3D. There's also support for a slew of sports titles going all the way back to 2003.
The Third Age (Score:2)
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That or there were enough games on the same engine to justify the BC work for that engine.
MechInstaller (Score:1)
Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is nice to see them continue support for Xbox titles, I am enjoying going through the games I missed first time around. Especially seeing as Sony seem to have given up on backwards compatibility. On the flip side, they do still sell the PS2 and you can't say the same for the Xbox.
As a side note, Xbox games seem to difficult to get hold of/expensive. For example, I have seen KOTO
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
360 has 1 version / 4 versions without BC, the remaining 3 have ~40% BC.
Wii is ~99% BC with GC titles.
I don't see Sony being against BC but they did trim it to reduce the price. MS has paid lip service to BC but isn't really that into it.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize that they are writing this emulator without having access to any of the specs for the CPU or GPU that were in the original xbox. It's not as simple are writing a 1:1 emulator simply because they don't have access to all the information to do that, they're effectively reverse engineering the original xbox to make sure that each game works. Because the emulation isn't perfect they don't have as large of a percentage of games, and they individually test each one. The fact that two years after release they're still updating the backwards compatibility list and still working on the emulator is pretty impressive in of itself.
Not to mention that the Xbox emulator on the Xbox 360 renders the game at a higher resolution then the original xbox did, with Anti-Aliasing to boot. This is why Xbox games typically look better on the Xbox 360. Overall that emulation software on the Xbox 360 is a engineering marvel that it works as well as it does with what typically is some of the most hardware bound performance intensive code.
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But really isn't that into it?!?!?
You realize that they are writing this emulator without having access to any of the specs for the CPU or GPU that were in the original xbox. It's not as simple are writing a 1:1 emulator simply because they don't have access to all the information to do that, they're effectively reverse engineering the original xbox to make sure that each game works. Because the emulation isn't perfect they don't have as large of a percentage of games, and they individually test each one. The fact that two years after release they're still updating the backwards compatibility list and still working on the emulator is pretty impressive in of itself.
The choices of CPU/GPU more or less justifies my comment. As well 2 years and ~40%, it started out at ~30% with marginal improvements. Event hat 30% was iffy. Nintendo showed they were serious about BC (or unconcerned with performance) by using an extended GC chipsets for the wii. Sony included the hardware in their machines and wrote a CPU emu.
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According to wikipedia, the xbox 360 started out with 213 games that were backwards compatible. There are now 478 games that are backwards compatible. It looks like the Xbox had 900-1000 games written for it. So, it would seem that the xbox360 originally had roughly 20% of games backwards compatible. Now it apparently has 51% of games backwards compatible. Custom writing an emulator and testing it out for
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...without having access to any of the specs for the CPU or GPU that were in the original xbox.
I call BS. They used slightly modified Intel and nVidia consumer level chips. It's not like it's some 30 year old processor that was designed on a cocktail napkin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox [wikipedia.org]
I find it hard to believe they simply pitched ALL technical reference materials for the orig. Xbox.
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NVidia is the harder part, but remember, all the games are coded to DirectX, which MS sets the standard for.
I'd say the hardest issue is NVidia avoiding patents.
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It would be more accurate to say that emulating hardware, even known hardware in software is *hard*. Emulating the instruction sets and APIs is probably the easy part. The hard part is realising all the horrible race cond
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But look at the trend. Backwards compatibility on the PS3 is going away... on the 360 it's slowly getting better.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
When building the original XBOX, MS choose to make a very "PC like" design that was essentially a specialized Windows PC. To save time and money, rather than developing their own hardware they outsourced that task to Nvidia and Intel who adapted existing parts (the NV25 and the Celeron 733) to the XBOX. Crucially however, they did not sell the production rights of those parts to Microsoft.
Fast forward a few years. The XBOX is selling nicely and Microsoft, like most console manufacturers, wants to reduce the price of the console to sell more units. Unfortunately for MS, since they don't own the rights to the GPU and couldn't reverse-engineer it, Nvidia has them over a barrel on pricing and they refuse to reduce the cost of the GPU (I'm told they were ballsy enough to actually try to raise it). Intel was much more willing to negotiate for the CPU (because they had competitors, like AMD), but that was useless without the GPU.
Because of their inability to cost-reduce the XBOX, Microsoft kills it prematurely. That's why absolutely NO XBOX games were release after 2006. Microsoft actually paid developers to have them move their games in development to the 360.
Fast forward to the launch of the 360: Without being able to include compatible hardware in the 360, MS is forced to rely on software emulation for backwards compatibility. Emulating Intel and Nvidia hardware on a Power4 system with an ATI GPU it even more difficult than it sounds. Consequently, backwards compatibility on the 360 is less that stellar.
You could blame Microsoft for this situation because they failed to ensure they held the rights to the Nvidia GPU, but personally I blame NVIDIA for being greedy. It hurt them in the end. Ever wonder why all the next-generation console have ATI GPUs? It's because of the way NVIDIA burned MS on the XBOX.
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No. The RSX chip in the PS3 is an nvidia part.
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I doubt they needed to do any significant GPU emulation -- that's what DirectX is for. I suspect the games that used nVidia-specific graphics routines are probably the same ones that have graphical artifacting, lowered framerate, or just don't have compatibility. As for the x86, it's a really well-known target, and Microsoft bought the leading PPC->x86 emulator company.
The BC updates are al
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And I suspect that while Microsoft has access to NVIDIA's internal design documents, their programmers doing the backwards compatibility specifically ARE NOT looking at them. I bet using NVIDIA's proprietary information is a violation of their contract and that the XBOX emulator in the 360 is entirely "white roomed" so Microsoft has deniablity. They have to do this bec
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Second, DirectX isn't platform generic! That's one of the reasons the XBOX had to be built the way it was. On top of that, NVIDIA and ATI both had proprietary extensions to DirectX and the XBOX makes heavy use of NVIDIA's proprietary extensions, which have to be emulated on the 360.
Yes, there is a POWER4 version of DirectX 9 built for the 360/PS3, but that's just ANOTHER platform. And there's more to switching platforms than a recompile due to hardware-specific graph
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The Nintendo GameCube is a different brand than the older consoles, so you wouldn't expect it to run the older games. Anything with the GameBoy name in it does run older titles in the same line though. NES / SNES you could have expectations for, and in fact Nintendo did try to make them compatible but didn't succeed.
The Prius comparison d
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Vista 64 does not run Windows 3.1 apps (Score:2)
Windows Vista will still run Win16 software.
O RLY? From Windows XP Professional x64 Edition on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Unlike prior versions of the Windows NT line, 64-bit Windows versions do not include NTVDM so there is no support for the execution of MS-DOS, POSIX, OS/2 1.x and 16-bit Windows applications
From Features removed from Windows Vista on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
As with x64 editions of Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003, in x86-64 versions of Windows Vista, NTVDM, the Win16 subsystem for 16-bit applications is no longer present. (This includes all applications for DOS, Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0 and Windows 3.x.)
Or are you talking about running an older version of Windows inside Virtual PC inside Windows Vista?
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The 32 bit version of Windows is fully capable of running 16 bit Windows code.
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An x86 processor running in 64 bit mode isn't capable of running 16 bit code. Blame AMD & Intel for that, not Microsoft.
Nor is a PowerPC processor capable of running MIPS code, yet the PLAYSTATION 3 can run PlayStation games, and some PLAYSTATION 3 consoles can run some PlayStation 2 games.
The 32 bit version of Windows is fully capable of running 16 bit Windows code.
So now you have to buy 2 copies of Windows to run all your Windows apps. That's like buying a PS2 and a PS3.
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Windows maintains all compatibility it possibly can. The PS3, obviously not.
68K on PPC and PPC on Intel? (Score:2)
Windows is a software platform. Playstation is a hardware platform. Different beasts.
Is Mac OS X also a hardware platform under your analysis because it's locked to one company's hardware?
Windows maintains all compatibility it possibly can.
No, it does not. A PowerPC processor cannot run 68K code, so Mac OS 7 through 9 had an emulator to run 68K code on PowerPC. An Intel processor cannot run PowerPC code, so Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 have an emulator to run PowerPC code on x86. So if an x86 processor in 64-bit mode cannot run 16-bit code, then why doesn't Windows include an emulator to run 16-bit code on an x86 processor in 64-bit mode?
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Informative)
As nice a media piece about them still "caring" about BC on the 360 at this point I have no doubt it's driven by money... the more they support in BC the more they can pad their Xbox 1 download catalog when they roll it out (probably around the same time as the update).
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Or so I have read.
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This mean that YES you CAN take your hard drive to another console and play your downloaded games but you'll have to also sign into your Xbox Live account to validate that you're the content owner. The problem comes when you try to use it on the new console and you don't have in
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As for those PC tools you can go to your local BestBuy or Ga
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WHAT? Companies are motivated by money? Whoa!
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Not diminished. (Score:3, Insightful)
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KOTOR 1 and 2 as well as Jade Empire (same engine as KOTOR, more of an active battle system similar to Mass Effect except with martial arts instead of guns) have been supported on BC for quite some time now. If you haven't played them, you really must. Especially if you're enjoying Mass Effect.
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Morrowind? On the Xbox 360? (Score:2)
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I don't care about any "console versus PC" teenage crap. I just prefer to play games on the whatever system they run best on. (Which is usually the one they were designed for.)
Sonny Bono (Score:2)
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Wouldn't it be even better if fo
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I could go on
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We live in a time where everyone feels "entitled" to things. I think that's sad.
Perhaps. My beef has nothing to do with entitlement, though. Microsoft is charging, and if I feel their services aren't worth what they charge, I have every right to be dissatisfied (and no, I don't pay for Xbox Live). That's not entitlement, that's simply business. Microsoft is also going into a market, and trying to get people to pay for something typically offered for free. It should be no surprise that there's resistance.
You're right that you probably won't convince me, but that has more to do with t
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Come on. The matchmaking service? Friend lists? Instart messaging? The right to buy additional content? That's what you can come up with?
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The difference, of course, between Microsoft and Blizzard/Square-Enix is that they actually provide servers! I understand the justification in charging for those g
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To say that Microsoft has a monopoly on their own console is a truism and there's really no point in it. The fact that the videogame industry is now able to support three consoles instead of two goes to show that lack of choice isn't much of an issue. "Monopoly" is just a buzz word people love to throw around whenever speaking of Microsoft and sticking it into a truism just to validate it g
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If you don't find value in the offerings of the product: DON'T USE IT, go get a PS3, or play on PC. Whining on message-boards seems to be a rather fruitless solution.
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How about the cost to actually come up with and create the service.
Are you kidding me? Seriously, is your post intended to be ironic?
If you don't find value in the offerings of the product: DON'T USE IT, go get a PS3
Uh, yeah, I did that too. I have both a PS3 and a 360, and I play online games on the PS3.
Whining on message-boards seems to be a rather fruitless solution.
Okay, I don't get it. I should not complain about something I don't like because you think complaining does no good? It's a free market, you know. That doesn't only mean that corporations can do whatever the fuck they want, it also means that I can complain about it if I don't like it, and maybe convince others that it's a bad thing which they sh
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I own all three current-gen systems, but I don't pay for live, so I usually buy the PS3 version of online titles. Unfortunately, in some cases, the PS3 version never comes out, is way late, or sucks (see: Orange Box). So I complain.
Basically, Microsoft expects me to pay for something I should get for free. If Sony can host Warhawk games without me paying for it, why does Microsoft expect me to pay for not hosting online games? Paying for Live sucks, so I'm not going to do it, but not paying hurts my Xb
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What does Live give me that the PS3 doesn't have? (Score:2)
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Personally my Live account is priced just right. I don't mind hosting games - and I will drop from a laggy/stuttering game if I'm not hosting.
The design reminds me of the way bittorrent distributes the load. It reduces the MSFT infrastructure needs to a few "tracker"-type servers and then cuts them out of the loop. It
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But Microsoft don't price competitively. They charge 5-12 times what GameSpy charge for the same service and infinitely more than Sony and Nintendo. $5-10 a month would be reasonable for access to high quality hosted servers and $0 per month would be reasonable to allow you to play directly using an XBox as the server. AFAIK, there is no option but XBox Live Gold if you want to play on-line, you can't just type in the IP of your clan server or find a free, public server.
Bittorrent is good for P2P and no
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It isn't even infinitely times as many, because ((n | n != 0) / 0) doesn't equal infinity. You just cannot divide by zero in the most commonly used number systems.
Anyway. I don't pay for Xbox Live Gold, because I don't play multiplayer. Yippee.
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get off my lawn (Score:2, Interesting)
even the dumb video camera requires xboxlive gold subscription. on PS3 you can video conference over standard network connection - no subscription... and i hate ps3, but they have this one thing right.
I
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Half of my time are wasted on finding good sessions and when I only can squeeze an hour in here and there to play, it is mostly useless.
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Tried Thief 3? (Score:2)
It's REALLY BIZARRE to play though, since every light source in the level can be seen through the walls... something in their emulated video code is really messed up.
So now, with a little work (Score:1)
Re:So now, with a little work (Score:5, Funny)
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On XBox Live, if you frag a friend, then a friend of that friend, and so on to the depth of six people... Kevin Bacon eventually calls you "teh gey" whilst sounding like a thirteen year old boy with hormonal issues.
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Dark Alliance (Score:1)
This is weird... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only console to have it right on this generation is the Wii. (Which, strangely enough, may be why it's still doing so well despite the surprising lar
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To be fair, complaining about the Playstation backwards compatibility, and comparing it next to the Xbox, isn't a fair fight. The Xbox doesn't even co
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While a new 40GB PS3 has NONE whatsoever.
Re:This is weird... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not. The PS2 ran the same code (common MIPS architecture processor) and had the same IO controller for audio and controller access as the original Playstation. Compatibility was assured through hardware. The graphics controller was also superficially similar - enough at least to let your games run, just faster and with some blending tacked on top.
Nintendo hit the same concept with the Wii being able to play Gamecube games - it practically *is* a Gamecube, just faster.
The PS3 also includes some of the original components of the PS2 for compatibility's sake although they are starting to get rid of those right now, and they never worked so well. The Xbox 360 ain't even slightly like the original Xbox. New CPU, new IO, new graphics controller.. the whole thing is software emulation. It should be said that Sony and Microsoft have different compatibility goals - Microsoft want to keep Xbox owners happy by letting them use their old games and back catalogue (Nintendo have the same goal). After all in a world where Halo and Halo 2 (or Metroid Prime and Echoes) did so well, do you really want gamers to start from the third game and lose the ability to play the saga from the start?
Sony have decided nobody wants to buy a $500 console to play 8 year old games so they're ditching the feature. Since they continue selling the PS2 at ridiculously affordable prices, there's no point making the PS3 compatible. It's not like you can still buy a Gamecube or Xbox brand new, though, these days.
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That "ridiculously affordable price" for the PS2 is still $130, which means you have to spend $630 rather than just $500 to get PS2 and PS3 support (assuming you don't already have a PS2, of course). As
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If I get a 400 dollar PS3 and a $99 PS2 (read the news more, that's the coming revision), I pay the same price as the $500 PS3 that runs PS2 games fairly well. It seems like Sony is letting me decide if I want the feature. I can also get a sued PS2... or if I'm like most gamers, use the one I already own.
And my PS2 controllers seem to work really well on my PS3. Even on PS3 games. Any PS2 to PC usb adaptor works (you can get 'em for $5). I'll write off the comments about power plugs, e
No Game Boy Player for Wii (Score:2, Informative)
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How is this "insightful"?
If by "almost non-existent" you mean: "supports a much larger percentage of the previous generation's library than the 360, had a larger library to support in the first place, and goes back two generations", then yeah. That's almost non-existent. Oh, unless you buy the one model that doesn't support backwards compatibility in order to be sold at a discount... But even that model supports back
The real reason for the compatability updates (Score:2)
6 degrees (Score:1)
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Now a what-if for you: What if you play a bunch of multiplayer games on a regular basis? Should that person be charged more because they play different titles? Better yet - why not pay according to time used - that would work perfectly with my AOL dial-up account!
All joking aside, Xbox live offers a service that allows people to have a highly reliable online
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