Xbox 360 Backward Comp updated

Anyone who thinks MS didn’t fuck up backwards compatibility is playing the apologist.

Fact is, the system is not backwards compatible. They are offering software to help play old games on the new system, but this isn’t backwards compatibility. They should have never used those words. Instead, what they should have said, is: “We are working on ways to play certain xbox games on the xbox 360”.

Then there wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

That being said, I was talking with a friend who’s doing some xbox 360 stuff lately, and he said that half the problem is most likely the fact that even if you did a straight compile to x360, (assuming fixing API incompatibilities, etc), xbox games run like twelve kinds of shit, simply because the 360 processors don’t do branch prediction. Or at least, not on anywhere near the same level that PCs have had since the K6 and P3. This means that any kind of a cache miss is so ridiculously brutal that it grinds everything to a halt.

Radically different processor architecture means that backwards compatibility is absolutely impossible.

To be honest, I don’t give a fuck about backwards compatability really. I hardly ever used it at all on PS2 and I don’t imagine I’d use it a whole lot on Xbox, either. Most of the games I enjoyed on that system (PGR, Halo, GTA, Tiger, Burnout) either have or will have superior versions for X360, so my interest in the old versions has pretty much died.

I’ve spoken to gamer friends about this and they feel much the same way. Question: How much do you REALLY care about being able to play your old games on the new system?

It is a nice feature to have, but I’m just as happy to leave my old XB1 hooked up next to the new one. That seems to be a much more reliable solution anyway. And THEN maybe if Microsoft hadn’t been tooling around with all this emulation bullshit, they could have diverted their efforts elsewhere, locked the hardware earlier and shipped more units for launch. :D

My interest in backwards compatibility on the XBox 360 is as someone who never had an original XBox in the first place and am interested in how it would make the original library available as well as being able to play the 360 titles. Yeah, XBoxes will be dirt cheap soon enough, but I really don’t want the additional hassle and clutter.

That also means that I’d be more interested in the somewhat more obscure titles that they’re not aiming the compatibility at right away though, and not the titles that will inevitably have an (n+1) iteration.

It’s not critically important though, just another factor that pushes that ‘buy it already’ impulse a little closer to overcoming the wallet’s resistance…

If my choices are:

  • No backwards compatability
  • Full (PS2-lke) back-com, but a $500 price tag for the box
  • Maybe, maybe not back-com that looks to get better over time

I’m choosing #3.

Screw #3, unreliable solutions aren’t really solutions. This is a case of MS shooting off its mouth and promising what they couldn’t deliver. What’s amazing is that people are letting them slide on this while they crusade against Sony for dropping features from a feature set that isn’t even finalized yet. MS didn’t even do you the courtesy of admitting they couldn’t really deliver.

Major Nelson’s blog says that MS has pulled the update because it broke Halo 2 widescreen. They’ve fixed the issue and will rerelease it later today.

Jose Liz predicted this over two hours ago.

  • Alan

RickH- So you’d rather have 1 or 2? And other people are the biased ones, right?

Jose Liz predicted this over two hours ago.

  • Alan[/quote]

I kinda tune him out.

Options 1 and 2 have the benefit of being simple, honest, and straightforward. So, yes. Better to have no BC than half-assed BC, or better to have true BC at a reasonable price. As it sits right now, it’s an ugly kludge that was oversold by MS and thus does little to enhance MS’s credibility.

And now that I think about it, yes, I am biased against companies that lie/overpromise/puff their features right up to and after the release date. I think it’s dishonest. Removing a feature before the release date lets the buyer decide whether it’s a deal-breaker or not.

Certainly from my prespective, I became less enthusiastic about the X360 when I learned it would not be fully BC, because that made a system replacement for the Xbox I currently have impossible. Woe be to those who actually believed MS’s hype and sold their original Xboxes to help pay for X360’s that won’t play their games.

What about #4: rumors of “unsupported” backwards compatibility that you can enable by subtly “hacking” your system to connect to the MSFT “in development” servers? Out of the box so-called compatibility might earn extra sales among the less informed, but why not try and build up some geek cachet instead? I guess it all depends on how quickly MS thinks it can move from “promised” to “functional.”

  • Alan

Why would they want to build a geek cachet?

I’m thinking this is probably going to be true. But we’ll see.

I also have noticed that the PS3 does not have a PS2 memory card slot on it. I hope that unlike MS, they have some sort of USB dongle thingy so you can get at your saved games.

Better to have no BC than half-assed BC,

Yeah, you lost me here. That doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense. You’re going to have to switch from ‘fanboy’ to ‘human’ for this discussion.

I was always annoyed that you couldn’t use PS2 memory cards with PS1 games when playing on the PS2. Which was probably the main reason why I didn’t bother playing any PS1 games on my PS2.

It does have 2 slots.

It does have 2 slots.[/quote]
Yeah, but you still have to sniff around for an old PS1 memory card. I learned this the hard way when I picked up Parappa the Rapper for cheap and then realized I couldn’t save. Plus, the old gray card looks shitty sticking out of your slick black PS2.

EB has piles of used memory cards for PSX. You can buy like ten of them for $20.

–Dave

It really is a weak arguement.

That’s not the issue. The issue is that here I have this 8mb memory card sitting in the thing, and am still limited to 15 save slots on my shitty 128k PS1 card that I’m forced to still use (and have since lost, go figure).

Hint: None of my arguments are ever about money or cost unless I explicitly state so. I have no problem spending money.