Software Emulation and BC Xbox>360 Vs 360>720?

T

tinfoilhatman

Banned
My apologies for the newb questions here but there’s seems to be a lot of differing opinions\facts on whether or not downloadable and arcade games from the 360 generation will be playable on 720\Durango or whatever it ends up being called and how that will or will NOT be accomplished.

Honestly I’m a lot more interested in this than the console warriors premature battle of which system will have more flops, memory, CPU bla bla bla.


With the widespread success of the 360 and downloadable\arcade games hasn’t Microsoft been planning backwards compatibility on their next generation offering for the last 6-7 years?

Due to the similarities(ie ATI>AMD Vs Nvidia>ATI) between 360 GPU and Durango GPU and DirectX code portability shouldn’t porting or emulation be “easier”?

How does CPU OOO processing, as in Xbox had it 360 did not and vise versa with 360>720 impacting porting and emulation?

Considering most console games are GPU constrained(I thought) how does 8 physical jaguar cores Versus 3(yes 2 VMX units per core) physical Xenon cores compare to one another for code portability , brute force emulation and the ability to “offload” some of that work to the GPU?

Disc based games Vs Downloadable games , can’t downloadable live games be recompiled to be “Durango friendly”? After all isn’t this is all Microsoft semi-managed code were talking about here and wouldn’t this be a lot easier than “patching” disc based games like MS did with 360 for Xbox1 backwards compatibility since the patches have to compatible with all the content already on this disc?

Thanks in advance for putting up with my newb questions and or any responses
 
If the games are written on the high-level API (XNA) like Live Indie titles, I expect they can be recompiled. I don't think complete BC is really on the cards at this point. Neither MS nor Sony really went into this gen ready to support forward BC via hardware abstraction, so lack of BC shouldn't come as a huge surprise. It's often been shoe-horned onto consoles more than designed in.
 
I think our best chance for something resembling comprehensive backwards compatibility is if the rumored "compute module" in Orbis is actually an SPE array. RSX could be emulated by an AMD GPU easily enough, so it's mostly whether you can emulate the PPE effectively with 8 Jaguars at half the original clock speed.
 
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I'm not expecting BC through software emulation to come this coming generation. I think both Sony and MS have seen the financial investment in it not really yielding their diviends this gen. I also think that MS have seen Sony's move to uprezzed HD ports and how lucrative that business has been for them, and I think this is something both will push third parties for in the coming generation.

At the same time however, given diminishing returns in graphics, I'm not all too sure "super HD classics" of this gen's best games would be a really viable sell.
 
Probably not. I do like the vision of persistent backwards compatibility, though. If not PS3, Orbis should surely be able to run all PS1, PS2 and PSP software. Although the PSP would be download only.
 
The current layout certainly leaves plenty of room for relatively easy semi-hardware backward compatibility for 720 to 360, where on the other hand the next PS3 it would be pretty much impossible.
 
So it sounds like the jury is still mostly out on this question.

As I've gotten older I have less and less time to console game but I am really excited for the possibility of native 1080p gaming and a nice jump in IQ.

I guess as a long time iOS gamer I've just come to expect downloadable content to be forward compatible, if neither systems downloadable(Live Arcade\PSN) games are compatible with next gen hardware I won't be purchasing ANY downloadable content moving forward from either provider.

I see this as a HUGE loss in credibility to Microsoft and to a somewhat lesser extent Sony and even worse to smaller developers that specialize in Arcade\PSN games and can'
t afford to put their software on disc.

After being burned like this who is seriously going to purchase downloadable content for XB720 or PS4 when you can buy disc based content for the same price and resell it?

Thanks to everyone for your responces
 
tinfoilhatman said:
Disc based games Vs Downloadable games , can’t downloadable live games be recompiled to be “Durango friendly”? After all isn’t this is all Microsoft semi-managed code were talking about here and wouldn’t this be a lot easier than “patching” disc based games like MS did with 360 for Xbox1 backwards compatibility since the patches have to compatible with all the content already on this disc?
Click to expand...
Microsoft doesn't compile the games, the dev studios do, they submit those to MS which then validates them and allows them to be sold/downloaded.

The studios would have to do the re-compile for there to be a "durango friendly" version as MS doesn't have the source files.
 
tinfoilhatman said:
After being burned like this who is seriously going to purchase downloadable content for XB720 or PS4 when you can buy disc based content for the same price and resell it?
Click to expand...
When you bought the games, you bought XB360 games. there was never any promise that they'd play on new, completely different consoles, so you haven't been burned. There was no significant history of BC in consoles such that it could be assumed, nor that MS or Sony should have had the foresight to ensure all download titles (a new concept when those consoles launched) would be forwards compatible.

Now that things have changed, I expect download games for both Durango and Orbis to be forwards compatible, and even cross-device compatible. I don't see any real reason to blame them for not implementing that this gen. the way you have been able to enjoy device compatibility on iOS is because the core hardware is still the same architecture, whereas in console, for lots of reasons, it's had to change significantly from generation to generation. And of course, iOS runs a fat OS, whereas consoles liberate far more hardware performance to the devs by allowing more direct access to the hardware.

It's also worth noting that on Android, you can buy a game, upgrade your device, and find it doesn't work. There are no guarantees there, and divergent hardware makes it hardware to maintain. You really are just used to something of an exception within the software space.
 
Didn't this gen show that there is a lot more money for the devs if they release (HD) remake of certain games instead providing BC? Is MS really interested in BC...or will they just release ultra remakes of games like Sony did this gen...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
When you bought the games, you bought XB360 games. there was never any promise that they'd play on new, completely different consoles, so you haven't been burned. There was no significant history of BC in consoles such that it could be assumed, nor that MS or Sony should have had the foresight to ensure all download titles (a new concept when those consoles launched) would be forwards compatible.
Click to expand...

I feel like Microsoft set the president themselves by making the most poplar making 360 compatible with most Xbox1 games(via patches or emulation) as well as pushing downloadable\arcade games so hard from day 1 with 360.......no I do not hold Sony to quite the same standard but I'll be bummed if Journey isn't playable on PS4.

Do you really think the mainstream gaming consumer won't be outraged once they figure this out?
 
You linked to the list, you didn't need to paste it in a post. I hope a mod edits it out (new users can't edit posts, can they?), it's really annoying..
 
tinfoilhatman said:
I feel like Microsoft set the president themselves by making the most poplar making 360 compatible with most Xbox1 games(via patches or emulation) as well as pushing downloadable\arcade games so hard from day 1 with 360.......no I do not hold Sony to quite the same standard but I'll be bummed if Journey isn't playable on PS4.

Do you really think the mainstream gaming consumer won't be outraged once they figure this out?
Click to expand...

I'd say Sony set the larger precedent with the PS2 being able to play PS1 games. Prior to that if you didn't use a PC for gaming, you had no backwards compatibility.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
I'd say Sony set the larger precedent with the PS2 being able to play PS1 games. Prior to that if you didn't use a PC for gaming, you had no backwards compatibility.

Regards,
SB
Click to expand...

Not true, Sega Genesis was backwardly compatible with the Master System, you just needed a cart adapter.
I don't think Nintendo ever bothered.
 
Nintendo tried with the SNES' slow CPU, but for some reason dropped it. Too bad they didn't change the CPU(Or at least upclock it!) after that...
 
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