Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list revealed

[wazoo]

HL2 and no Doom 3 ??

 

[MrWibble]

Todd: What I’m really proud to tell you and your readers is that it’s easy to get the emulation software, and it’s free. We’ll give gamers a choice—you can get the latest software updates from Xbox Live, burn a CD from xbox.com or sign up on Xbox.com for a CD that can be delivered to your home at a nominal shipping and handling fee. Once you get the CD, put it in your Xbox 360 and you’re ready to go.

You can burn a CD with code on it and the X360 will read it? That could have "interesting" possibilities...

 

[jvd]

You can burn a CD with code on it and the X360 will read it? That could have "interesting" possibilities...

I'm thinking u download the iso and burn it and the iso and the iso has copy protection on it . So u can burn it and use it for its purpose but thats it .

Personaly it be smart for them to just give the discs to local gamestores or in xbox magazine

anyway if this is true then we don't have to worry about non premium users , just need a disc and your bcing

 

[MrWibble]

I'm thinking u download the iso and burn it and the iso and the iso has copy protection on it . So u can burn it and use it for its purpose but thats it .

Personaly it be smart for them to just give the discs to local gamestores or in xbox magazine

anyway if this is true then we don't have to worry about non premium users , just need a disc and your bcing

Oh sure, it's bound to be protected... for one thing I doubt very much that the machine would run unsigned code.

But frankly any avenue by which an end user can inject code into the machine would let people both study the process and potentially subvert it easily if a weakness were ever found. Witness the fiasco with PSP...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Er, what exactly do they mean with 'upscaling to 720p'? Rendering in native 720 line resolution, with AA - which would require tiling AFAIK - or rendering to 640*480 with AA and upscaling it? The two are quite different...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I guess the latter seeing the Halo screenshots. The 720p version definitely had a slight sort of blurry fuzz going on which I guess is the upscaling. Plus changing to 720p would probably muck up absolute screen values, so interfaces could appear mussed up etc.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

MS and/or Bungie should really set things straight, or they'll get busted once all the people expecting native 720p see the reviews and start complaining...

 

[Master-Mold]

**** yes!

Deathrow is on the initial list.

Me and my friends still play Deathrow all the time.

Good news!!!

 

[AlNom]

I am a little surprised that some other first party games didn't make the list like MechAssault and Crimson Skies. DOAU and DOAX would probably be in the next wave; DOAU uses DOAX's updated engine and that follows from DOA3. The absence of SC:CT or Doom 3 could be an indication of how closely coded they are to the metal, same with Chronicles of Riddick and FarCry. Otogi would have been nice to have.

I guess I'm not too surprised at Max Payne & 2 being on the list being ports themselves.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Er, what exactly do they mean with 'upscaling to 720p'? Rendering in native 720 line resolution, with AA - which would require tiling AFAIK - or rendering to 640*480 with AA and upscaling it? The two are quite different...

Is it possible that they will use traditional MSAA without using the 10 MB eDRAM and tiling? 360's GPU should be more than capable of running old Xbox games at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 with AA even without utilizing the "free" MSAA that the eDRAM offers.

 

[Dave Glue]

200 titles at launch is impressive, but I'm also wondering about the "upscaling" comment - that doesn't exactly make it sound like 1280*720, just 640*480 blown up to HD res.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Is it possible that they will use traditional MSAA without using the 10 MB eDRAM and tiling? 360's GPU should be more than capable of running old Xbox games at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 with AA even without utilizing the "free" MSAA that the eDRAM offers.

Yeah, they could be rendering to the main RAM, however the article explicitely mentions that they're all using the EDRAM. And that couldn't fit an 1280*720 MSAA buffer...

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I am a little surprised that some other first party games didn't make the list like MechAssault and Crimson Skies.

Crimson Skies is on the list.

 

[3dcgi]

Is it possible that they will use traditional MSAA without using the 10 MB eDRAM and tiling? 360's GPU should be more than capable of running old Xbox games at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 with AA even without utilizing the "free" MSAA that the eDRAM offers.

Xbox 360 always renders to edram and other than that it performs "traditional" MSAA.

 

[one]

http://www.xbox.com/ja-JP/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm
The compatibility with the Japanese Xbox has been announced, but whoops!
It's decreased to 12 titles among 232 games (Crimson Skies, Fable, Forza, GTA, Halo1/2/Map Pack, Jade Empire, NG/NG Black, Rainbow Six, The Simpsons)
Strangely, DOA3 is not found in the list. Maybe they don't want to spoil DOA4 sales for a while?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Huh?! What's the difference?? Is it just that they haven't tested Jap versions of the other 200 titles?

 

[Powderkeg]

Er, what exactly do they mean with 'upscaling to 720p'? Rendering in native 720 line resolution, with AA - which would require tiling AFAIK - or rendering to 640*480 with AA and upscaling it? The two are quite different...

They are rendering internally at 640X480, adding the AA, and then upscaling it to 720p.

 

[MrWibble]

Huh?! What's the difference?? Is it just that they haven't tested Jap versions of the other 200 titles?

Presumably this stuff has to be QA'd, if it involves releasing code or whatever to make each title run, and it's probably in their interests to concentrate on regions where it actually sold a reasonable number. Quite disappointing all the same though.

Anyone found a UK/Europe list yet? Is it going to be somewhere in the middle or do MS consider Europe to be as important as the US?

 

[AzBat]

One thing I thought was interesting was the following quote:

Are there any emulators already pre-loaded on the hard drive?

An early version of the emulator that supports Halo®: Combat Evolved and Halo® 2 offline is included on Xbox 360 Hard Drives right out of the box as a special bonus to devoted fans of the franchise. However, to play Halo 2 online, or to play any other titles on the launch list, the full emulator update is required.

So actually out of the box only Halo and Halo2 will work. All of the other 211 games will need the new profiles downloaded off Live or Xbox.com.

Tommy McClain

 

[AlNom]

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Just load up the profiles that you want.