NVIDIA licensed for Xbox 360 backward compatibility

[Everlost_MI]

According to an article (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9562) on Gamesindustry.biz (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/), Microsoft has signed an agreement with NVIDIA to enable backward compatibility in the Xbox 360.

Here's a bit from the article:

The company apparently plans to emulate the Xbox' Intel CPU on the 360's multiple IBM PowerPC cores, and will now be able to emulate the NVIDIA chip to some extent on the ATI graphics chip in the 360 - but it would appear that many games will still not work without some modification.

Patches for some popular games - or "emulation profiles" - will ship on the Xbox hard drive, and those games will as a result work out of the box. Microsoft is expected to work to get emulation working for other games over time, and will distribute further emulation profiles over the Xbox Live service..."our goal is to make ALL Xbox games play on Xbox 360, and at launch we'll have a selection of the top selling that will be tested and confirmed to work."

[Syl]

Why do I have a strong feeling that playing Otogi or Panzer Dragoon Orta just isn't going to happen anytime soon?

[Redline]

Not to sound pessimistic or anything, but the XBox 360 is looking more and more like a premature ejaculation.

[peeweejd]

Why do I have a strong feeling that playing Otogi or Panzer Dragoon Orta just isn't going to happen anytime soon?

you have that feeling because those were not popular games...

[Goronmon]

Not to sound pessimistic or anything, but the XBox 360 is looking more and more like a premature ejaculation.
If there was ever a need for a "rolling eyes" emoticon, this would be it...

:rolleyes:

[Ernst_Jager]

Backward compatibility means nothing to me. If the game was good enough to warrant buying it in to play I would have bought it for the system it was intended for. I will buy a 360/PS3/Revolution for their games, not so I can play Halo or similiar on them.

[StoneGut]

And the winner is ... dum dum dum... NVIDIA!

[Goronmon]

Backward compatibility means nothing to me. If the game was good enough to warrant buying it in to play I would have bought it for the system it was intended for. I will buy a 360/PS3/Revolution for their games, not so I can play Halo or similiar on them.
Man, I wish I had the money to buy every game I wanted for every system I owned...

[MosBen]

From my understanding the PS2 achieves BC by including the actual PS1 hardware on a chip within the PS2. Can anyone tell me how Sony's doing BC for the PS3? I find it hard to believe that every Sony system from here on out will include the hardware from all previous generations of systems. At some point, if not already in the PS3, Sony's systems are going to have to emulate the previous generation through software.

I don't know why people expect current systems to be able to play every single game from the previous generations perfectly. It's never been the case before, why now?

[Babbster]

I don't know why people expect current systems to be able to play every single game from the previous generations perfectly. It's never been the case before, why now?

Why? Because there are thousands and thousands of people out there who want to trade in their old Xbox to get $20 off a 360 and they don't want to lose the ability to play AMF Bowling 2004 and Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus. If they can't play those games on their 360, all the great new games in the world won't make up for it. Can you blame them? TAO FENG!

[vornskr]

Why not now?

Why not make it the case now?

[Mojopin]

This is good news, but I hope they actually follow through with their promise of releasing more profiles. I got a feeling it's not really going to as frequently as their going to make it out to be. I'll sit on the fence for a while anyway, no sense in buying a first generation piece of hardware. I was burned buying a first gen Xbox and MS isn't going to get me that way again. I'll wait until the frequency of hardware failure drops, i.e. second generation Xbox 360s.

[Mojopin]

you have that feeling because those were not popular games...
lol, thank you captain obvious. =P

[Vandenh]

>I'll wait until the frequency of hardware failure drops

i.e. from .03% to .015%

[Rone]

From my understanding the PS2 achieves BC by including the actual PS1 hardware on a chip within the PS2. Can anyone tell me how Sony's doing BC for the PS3? I find it hard to believe that every Sony system from here on out will include the hardware from all previous generations of systems. At some point, if not already in the PS3, Sony's systems are going to have to emulate the previous generation through software.
To my knowledge, Sony hasn't said for certain how the PS3's backwards compatibility is achieved. But, a couple years ago they were looking for people with emulator programming experience. It sounds to me like they're going the software route. Hopefully PS1 games will actually look better this time.

[Redline]

Man, I wish I had the money to buy every game I wanted for every system I owned...

I sense a fanboi in our midst.

[Morratut]

I don't care for backwards compatibility.However the games i've got for my Xbox are the popular ones anyways, Halo,Halo2,Ninja Gaiden,Riddick,Forza etc so i'll be covered ;)

I'm buying my Xbox2 for Xbox2 games :D

[crashedout]

I would not worry just yet, according to some MS sources everytime they emulate a new game they increase the compatibitility with others. So maybe Otogi will not have offical support but will work anyway. Maybe. I could not sell my X-box even if I wanted to, its too custom and too beat up so this is not an issue to me.

[Goronmon]

I sense a fanboi in our midst.
Its fanboy! ;)

[Mrbunchypants]

I don't care for backwards compatibility.However the games i've got for my Xbox are the popular ones anyways, Halo,Halo2,Ninja Gaiden,Riddick,Forza etc so i'll be covered ;)

I'm buying my Xbox2 for Xbox2 games :D

So my question to you sir is, Are you going to keep your xbox hooked up and add your 360 to your tv in case you want to play those games?

Keep in mind that halo 3 is not comeing out untill the PS3 come to town.

[Hellstorm]

Micropayments to the rescue!!!

[netcraazzy]

I don't know why people expect current systems to be able to play every single game from the previous generations perfectly. It's never been the case before, why now?

My thought's exactly. The reason though is because it's a "feature," another measurable quantity that people can sit there and go HA! you don't have this. I keep all my old consoles and all my old games, if I'm on an old games binge I've got them handy.

As for the PS3's backwards compatibility, from what I've read they are doing a combination of software and hardware emulation. It's very possible that only the popular PS2 or PSOne games are supported at first on PS3 as well. From a cost/space standpoint I can see Sony doing hardware emulation of the PSOne and software emulation of the PS2. Or perhaps they will add a separate chip that is responsible for emulation of both PSOne and PS2.

[Wonka]

In the same way that I can't fault Nintendo for not affording hardware that is monstrous enough to require HD on all their games, I cannot fault MS for not having backwards compatibility on all their games immediately. This is obviously the result of something that happened a long time ago when they rushed the original Xbox to market. It seems to me that they are doing the best they can in this situation, and they are at least not overpromising. At least they are *trying* to be straight with you about it. They certainly *could* have just shown you a bunch of videos of Xbox games and made a bunch of outrageous promises. That would seem to be the norm in this business. The marketplace certainly does not seem to penalize anyone for just promising the world. But they didn't do that. Instead they chose to level with you about it.

Why do so many people take this stuff so personally? It's not like MS just wants to deprive you of backwards compatibility. Some of have a real burr in your butt over this.

[zangster]

So my question to you sir is, Are you going to keep your xbox hooked up and add your 360 to your tv in case you want to play those games?

Keep in mind that halo 3 is not comeing out untill the PS3 come to town.

I'm planning to keep mine up and running just for shiggles. I doubt the trade-in is going to be all that great so I may as well just keep it around, maybe even use it for a dvd in another room.

[Snowmit]

To my knowledge, Sony hasn't said for certain how the PS3's backwards compatibility is achieved. But, a couple years ago they were looking for people with emulator programming experience.

It's gotta be Bleem!

[TrackZero]

Good stuff. I didn't think Microsoft would go as far as making their goal to emulate all the original Xbox games. Looks like people's comments got through to them (about wanting more than just the grade A titles to work).

[Morratut]

To Mrbunchpants,

I will be probably keeping my old Xbox but probably only as a dvd player.I've never been bothered that much with older generation titles once the new generation has come.

I've had Atari 2600,Spectrum 128K,Amiga,SNES,3DO,PS1,Saturn,Dreamcast,PS2,Gamec ube and Xbox. I've never been interested in playing any saturn,snes games for example once i had my gamecube or xbox. Apart from my Gamecube and Xbox i've sold them all. I haven't missed the systems either <shrug> :rolleyes:

Even fantastic titles of this generation i will say 'Wow yeah i can see why i liked it,great. Mmmm but lets get back to the PS3,Rev,Xbox2 game we was all playing' :D

[Redline]

I'm not saying it won't work, but I'd preferably want all profiles for all games stored on the 360 upon release for all the current Xbox games on the market. With updates to come from live. Of course, I wouldn't really want to have to pay for live to get emulation of a certain game working correctly either.

For all you cabbages squeeling 'why don't people just keep their consoles!!' - some of us don't want a Console Collective sitting in our lounge room with wires all over the place. Some of us would prefer to not have to change systems each and every time we want to play a game. Some of us don't want a PS1, PS2, PS3, XBox and XBox360 (counting all systems that have a possibility of being emulated or are backwards compatible) connected up, and have to pay for the multi-av slot device that it might require to do so. How is this hard to understand?

Hell, I'm not even including the Revolution and Gamecube in there.

Duh.

[Zanzibar]

Micropayments to the rescue!!!

We have a winner.

Somehow, some way, MS will find a way to charge us $5 or so for BC for a 'pack' of 25 or 50 games.

I wonder HOW MS is going to figure out which games that the fans want BC for? Y'know what'd be great, is if after the X360 ships, the X360 would ask you if you wanted to list your Xbox1 games that you own (or want converted), and then the X360 could transmit your list to MS. That way they'd know which games that aren't currently supported are worth making patches for.

The reason why sales don't always make a good indicator is because lots of people buy popular games that have little or no replay value. Fusion Frenzy is one of my favorite party games, but the sales weren't great.

[Mrbunchypants]

To Mrbunchpants,

I will be probably keeping my old Xbox but probably only as a dvd player.I've never been bothered that much with older generation titles once the new generation has come.

I've had Atari 2600,Spectrum 128K,Amiga,SNES,3DO,PS1,Saturn,Dreamcast,PS2,Gamec ube and Xbox. I've never been interested in playing any saturn,snes games for example once i had my gamecube or xbox. Apart from my Gamecube and Xbox i've sold them all. I haven't missed the systems either <shrug> :rolleyes:

Even fantastic titles of this generation i will say 'Wow yeah i can see why i liked it,great. Mmmm but lets get back to the PS3,Rev,Xbox2 game we was all playing' :D

Sure I guess. My thing is that at some point in time i might go,"Hmmmm.... MGS Marathon :D ". then have to hook up ever console in order to play all of them. Or just hit the power button on my PS(insert number here) and start playing. Another thing is that tvs are getting more and more away from coax connection. and more into digital and such. how easy is it going to be to hook that up to a new tv when they don't make the connectors anymore.
And yes I still own MGS 1.

[bapenguin]

With updates to come from live. Of course, I wouldn't really want to have to pay for live to get emulation of a certain game working correctly either.


Live is free on the XBox 360.

[*Legion*]

Live is free on the XBox 360.

For everything other than playing online games, he means.

Access to the Marketplace and such is free.

[Heretic Machine]

I don't plan on selling my XBOX off to EBgames for $2 just because a new system comes out. Backwards compatibilty is -not- something that makes or breaks a system for me, it actually means very little. How many PS1 games have I played on my PS2... hrm... Final Fantasy Tactics. That's it.

Now admittedly, there are many more XBOX games I could see myself coming back to further down the road, like Halo. But still, I'm just gonna keep my friggin XBOX...

[Heretic Machine]

For everything other than playing online games, he means.

Access to the Marketplace and such is free.

I'm pretty sure they've said that it will also be free to play games on the weekends.

[Steele Johnson]

BC doesn't really matter to me. I buy new hardware to play new games. I bought a PS1 and I never ever wanted to play a game from that system on the PS2. There were so many better games on the PS2, so I never had any interest to roll back to any older games.

If there's an xbox game that I'm truly craving to play, it will take me 2 minutes to hook up the console. What's the big deal?

[Furious Wang]

Backwards compatibility isn't that big of a deal for me. I make frequent use of trade-in/preplayed markets at gamestops. Too many great games come out to justify owning a library of hundreds. But I do have to say Microsoft is making a mistake here. Hopefully they'll have an alternate distribution method for future patches, but not everyone has broadband and many won't have access to Live.

Maybe if their Demo kiosk is connected to Live, stays updated with patches, and lets you bring in a memory card to bring em back home it wouldn't be an issue.

[Babbster]

Maybe if their Demo kiosk is connected to Live, stays updated with patches, and lets you bring in a memory card to bring em back home it wouldn't be an issue.

Far easier, and not requiring the purchase of a memory card, would be to periodically include updates on the discs of new games and/or on the discs that come with OXM or similar magazines. They've already employed this update method and it stands to reason that they'll continue to do so.

[Furious Wang]

Far easier, and not requiring the purchase of a memory card, would be to periodically include updates on the discs of new games and/or on the discs that come with OXM or similar magazines. They've already employed this update method and it stands to reason that they'll continue to do so.

Yeah, but OXM costs 10 bucks. And its such a lame magazine.

[Babbster]

Yeah, but OXM costs 10 bucks. And its such a lame magazine.

Are you kidding? OXM is BEYOND lame, into territories on which lame magazines wouldn't deign to sully their boots. On the other hand, they get some VERY nice demos and sometimes provide access to XBL downloadable content without connecting to XBL, so what can you do? :)

[mister_slim]

The two games I'm worried about are Ninja Gaiden and Riddick. I have a sneaking suspicion that Itagaki can speak assembly and Starbreeze came out of the demo scene, so those two games might be problematic. Fuck, my Xbox has problems with both of Starbreeze's games.

[sTubbs]

I'm pretty sure they've said that it will also be free to play games on the weekends.

That was listed on the 'leaked specs' that turned out to be genuine. However, I think that it will probably be used more for promotion purposes, such as allowing people to play the latest major release on weekends for a month, or maybe for tournaments and so on - sort of how titles like Halo 2 came with a few months of free Live. I do not see MS allowing all 360 owners to play all Live games on every weekend. Doing so would certainly provoke a massive drop in Live subscribers. I for one only really play Live on the weekends anyway, so if it is indeed unlimited to everyone on weekends, MS can kiss my subscription goodbye.