GamePro Hands-on with 360: Halo 1/2 confirmed BC

All the speculation indeed turned out to be true and, performance wise, the game plays exactly the same, if not better than on the original Xbox, with no slowdown or hiccups. Interestingly, the textures seemed more crisp, perhaps due to the more advanced anti-aliasing.

Probably a placebo effect, like N64 players who used the 4MB RAM expansion on games that didn't support it and claimed improvements.
 
The Halo 1 and Halo 2 BC I expected - I mean... c'mon!

The fact that all the other titles they tried had some sort of issues though, that's what I found surprising. I was thinking that the number of games with issues would be a definitie minority. I guess they'll eventually work out the kinks in any of the games that matter though.
 
xbdestroya said:
The fact that all the other titles they tried had some sort of issues though, that's what I found surprising. I was thinking that the number of games with issues would be a definitie minority.

I don't know, this was exactly what i was expecting. It was pretty clear right from the start that Microsoft had no intention of adding backward compatibility to the X360 to begin with, they've been struggling to stitch it on after Sony's announcement.
 
_leech_ said:
I don't know, this was exactly what i was expecting. It was pretty clear right from the start that Microsoft had no intention of adding backward compatibility to the X360 to begin with, they've been struggling to stitch it on after Sony's announcement.

I have to say though, if it was just going to be Halo and Halo 2, they might as well *not* have made it B/C. People prefer a non-feature to a poorly implemented one when reflecting on the quality of their purchase. Oh well whatever, like I said I'm sure they'll workit out eventually. At the very least I would hope Ninja Gaiden and the other 'biggies' get proper B/C.
 
xbdestroya said:
I have to say though, if it was just going to be Halo and Halo 2, they might as well *not* have made it B/C. People prefer a non-feature to a poorly implemented one when reflecting on the quality of their purchase. Oh well whatever, like I said I'm sure they'll workit out eventually. At the very least I would hope Ninja Gaiden and the other 'biggies' get proper B/C.

Is there any reason to believe that game-pro's experience is going to be the actual initial OOTB experience when the actual product ships?
 
Joe DeFuria said:
Is there any reason to believe that game-pro's experience is going to be the actual initial OOTB experience when the actual product ships?

In all honesty I would say the answer is 'yes,' since at this point I have to consider Game-Pro for all intents and purposes as having an 'actual product.' Certainly nothing is going to change for the 360 between now and Nov 22nd - as we speak probably the last of the 360's for the 22nd launch are getting set to go out. What's left to be manufactured for the launch at this point is a minority of the launch allotment.
 
Struggling to stich it on? They were working on it before sonys annoucement. Anyway who know what games they tried, it could work with 100 other games for all we know and they simply picked games that haven't been emulated yet, or perhaps the emulator version could have been old. We really don't have the entire story yet, so don't jump to conclusions.I'm certain Sony will have to jump thorugh the same emulation hoops to make PS3 backwards compatable with PS2. infact they have an even more difficult task. They have thousands of games that need to be backwards compatable.

they said they would annouce what games will work pretty soon. i'm sure it's going to be more than just Halo 1& 2..
 
In all honesty I would say the answer is 'yes,' since at this point I have to consider Game-Pro for all intents and purposes as having an 'actual product.'

Well thats where you are wrong. They are using a "debug" kit, and not a retail xbox. it's for games that are in development, not finished games.
 
_leech_ said:
I don't know, this was exactly what i was expecting. It was pretty clear right from the start that Microsoft had no intention of adding backward compatibility to the X360 to begin with, they've been struggling to stitch it on after Sony's announcement.

You make it seem like MS was taken by surprise when Sony announced BC...

PS3 having BC is basically a foregone conclusion, I don't think anyone was surprised by that statement.
 
scooby_dooby said:
You make it seem like MS was taken by surprise when Sony announced BC...

Sure seems that way, Microsoft were pretty adamant that the X360 wouldn't offer backward compatability at all. Want me to dig up some quotes?
 
Qroach said:
Well thats where you are wrong. They are using a "debug" kit, and not a retail xbox. it's for games that are in development, not finished games.

Sheesh calm down - I'm hardly raising a flag here - I was simply explaining my logic. On the contrary, I'm one who thinks that MS will work out a majority of the B/C kinks. That being said though, what would inherently be different on the debug kit in relation to the retail when certainly the 360 B/C emulation via the hard drive must be locked in since several months ago? Patch downloads I can understand, but in that case the performance between the two - again - should not be too inherently different.
 
Well they're running the same hardware and software aren't they? As for the issues on the other games there were no details. Only the one-liner "Of course, the console choked on every other first and third party game we threw at, with one exception, the original Halo". Choked sounds worse than having some issues, as though they didn't run properly.

It'd be nice if they looked at the HDD contents to see if they can find a patch for Halo, what size and form it might take, and give some other info. Though I was expecting better results. More recently MS were talking about success with 1st Layer only software which was supposed to be a fair percentage if i remember right, but the article says 1st party and third party titles were choking. I guess there aren't many 1st layer titles, or what constitutes a first layer title isn't what GamePro tested.
 
Go right ahead, they certainly weren't ademant... Despite what was said in interviews they were still working on backwards compatability for a long time before E3, it simply wasn't made official. Anyway SONY is going to have the same issues.
 
Sheesh calm down - I'm hardly raising a flag here - I was simply explaining my logic.

I 'm already calm thanks. You explained you logic and I explained mine.

That being said though, what would inherently be different on the debug kit in relation to the retail when certainly the 360 B/C emulation via the hard drive must be locked in since several months ago? Patch downloads I can understand, but in that case the performance between the two - again - should not be too inherently different.

There's a hardware and software difference between retail kits and debug kits. The software on debug kits needs to be manually updated by developers with each Xdk release. basically they blow everything on it away and give it a fresh install with each new Xdkversion. As I was saying before, it could be that this debug box has an older version of the emulation software...
 
xbdestroya said:
That being said though, what would inherently be different on the debug kit in relation to the retail when certainly the 360 B/C emulation via the hard drive must be locked in since several months ago?

Why must it have been locked down several months ago?

Why should debug kits have all of the latest and greatest B/C libraries for all the games?

I just don't understand why "alarm bells" are going off. Certainly, there's going to be issues with many games and B/C upon launch. But we're just going to have to wait until final "off the shelf" kits are reviewed to find out.
 
I'm definately recall Microsoft stating firmly that there woiuldn't be backward compatibility for the X360, unfortunately all of the results i'm getting from searching are turning up articles from after the E3 announcement.
 
Qroach said:
There's a hardware and software difference between retail kits and debug kits. The software on debug kits needs to be manually updated by developers with each Xdk release. basically they blow everything on it away and give it a fresh install with each new Xdkversion. As I was saying before, it could be that this debug box has an older version of the emulation software...

Well, that's true that could be the case. I guess we'll see soon enough what Microsoft feels their 'good enough' B/C list is anyway when they put it up next week.

Joe Defuria said:
Why must it have been locked down several months ago?

Why should debug kits have all of the latest and greatest B/C libraries for all the games?

I just don't understand why "alarm bells" are going off. Certainly, there's going to be issues with many games and B/C upon launch. But we're just going to have to wait until final "off the shelf" kits are reviewed to find out.

Well, it's stored on the HDD isn't it? And I have to imagine the HDD received is a newer one, since it just went out to them.

As for the 'several months ago' - since launch 360's have been being stockpiled now for several months, well there ya go. It's easy to follow my train of thought there. Obviously further patches/additions will be available through future downloads and via updated HDD's, but as far as I'm concerned the final 360 - as it will be received next month - was frozen in time several months ago.

I agree on the waiting for the actual day though to say one way or the other how well B/C was executed.
 
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_leech_ said:
Probably a placebo effect, like N64 players who used the 4MB RAM expansion on games that didn't support it and claimed improvements.
Or maybe it's the Bleem effect where since it's running on an emulator it can use more advanced features from the new GPU.

At any rate, X360 b/c will be half-assed at best. MS is just doing this to say they have it. In two years I'll be surprised if MS is still writing emulators for Xbox games. Who still plays PSX games on their PS2? A show of hands please.

If you raised your hand, you're an anomaly and a freak.
 
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