XBOX360: Backwards compatibility may only be limited

[Ruined]

Seems XBOX360 may only be BC with "top selling" games.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124746.html
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/614/614498p1.html

This is a big bummer for me, and will likely push back my purchase of XBOX360 until after PS3's release. How about others? Will limited BC affect your purchasing of the system?

 

[jvd]

It depends on what the big titles are .

If its say any game that got 70% or better in reviews then i really don't care . That will be fine with me .

 

[DigitalSoul]

Not really.........but still I hope Panzer Dragoon Orta works :?

 

[Ruined]

It depends on what the big titles are .

If its say any game that got 70% or better in reviews then i really don't care . That will be fine with me .

Well, MS' words were "top selling." Some of the most unique and well-reviewed games like Panzer Dragoon Orta, Shenmue 2, Steel Battalion, Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, Pure Pinball, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Beyond Good and Evil, Jet Set Radio Future, Psychonauts, and Guilty Gear X2 #Reload either bombed or did mediocre saleswise. Hopefully the words were simply used as a cover for them in case it doesn't work with all games, rather than describing a system that will only work with a handful of XBOX1 blockbusters.

 

[jvd]

well i guess we have to wait and see . Personaly bc isn't a big deal. I like to keep my old consoles and its really only important if there is nothing left

 

[Dave Baumann]

http://news.com.com/A+gaggle+of+new+games+for+Xbox+360/2100-1043_3-5709353.html?tag=st_lh

At Monday's event, Microsoft also announced plans to make all games from its previous console compatible with the upcoming Xbox 360. However, few details were given regarding how, or when, updated support for Xbox titles would be achieved. Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as "Halo," then move down the line.

Sounds like it will be an on-going thing.

 

[Ruined]

http://news.com.com/A+gaggle+of+new+games+for+Xbox+360/2100-1043_3-5709353.html?tag=st_lh

At Monday's event, Microsoft also announced plans to make all games from its previous console compatible with the upcoming Xbox 360. However, few details were given regarding how, or when, updated support for Xbox titles would be achieved. Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as "Halo," then move down the line.

Sounds like it will be an on-going thing.

Now thats what I like to hear! I bet you money each game will likely need a "profile" of sorts to be stored on the hard drive in order to work right, and users will be able to download more profiles as time goes on over XBOX Live. As long as MS plans to keep up work to make most games BC eventually through Live updates, I'll buy the console.

edit: btw thanks for the link/clarification!

 

[jvd]

hopefully when they do this they upgrade the res of the titles and mabye even add in fsaa .

 

[Reznor007]

http://news.com.com/A+gaggle+of+new+games+for+Xbox+360/2100-1043_3-5709353.html?tag=st_lh

At Monday's event, Microsoft also announced plans to make all games from its previous console compatible with the upcoming Xbox 360. However, few details were given regarding how, or when, updated support for Xbox titles would be achieved. Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as "Halo," then move down the line.

Sounds like it will be an on-going thing.

Seems like it's a game specific emulation, IE, only emulating exactly what the game uses, and optimizing the hell out of it to get the speed decent.

 

[Ruined]

http://news.com.com/A+gaggle+of+new+games+for+Xbox+360/2100-1043_3-5709353.html?tag=st_lh

At Monday's event, Microsoft also announced plans to make all games from its previous console compatible with the upcoming Xbox 360. However, few details were given regarding how, or when, updated support for Xbox titles would be achieved. Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as "Halo," then move down the line.

Sounds like it will be an on-going thing.

Seems like it's a game specific emulation, IE, only emulating exactly what the game uses, and optimizing the hell out of it to get the speed decent.

Well thankfully the #1 game on their emulation list is Halo 2. Thankfully because it pushed the XBOX console to the extreme in terms of graphical effects/features/etc. If they can nail emu on that, they can probably do anything given the commitment based on their Halo 2 emulation.

 

[kyleb]

I'd hope they are emulating the platform as a whole and then setting resolution options and AA and AF to aprorate levels based on performance.

 

[Reznor007]

http://news.com.com/A+gaggle+of+new+games+for+Xbox+360/2100-1043_3-5709353.html?tag=st_lh

At Monday's event, Microsoft also announced plans to make all games from its previous console compatible with the upcoming Xbox 360. However, few details were given regarding how, or when, updated support for Xbox titles would be achieved. Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as "Halo," then move down the line.

Sounds like it will be an on-going thing.

Seems like it's a game specific emulation, IE, only emulating exactly what the game uses, and optimizing the hell out of it to get the speed decent.

Well thankfully the #1 game on their emulation list is Halo 2. Thankfully because it pushed the XBOX console to the extreme in terms of graphical effects/features/etc. If they can nail emu on that, they can probably do anything given the commitment based on their Halo 2 emulation.

I'm thinking that they will analyze each game and write highly optimized emulation/simulation code based on what that game tends to do.

Current N64 emulators are the same way. The coprocessor isn't really emulated, and things are high level emulated, which leads to bugs in practically every game, ranging from minor graphics things in Mario64, to completely non-working games like Rogue Squadron or World Driver Championship.

The reason I believe this is that true emulation of such a fast system as Xbox would be extremely slow. Look at MAME running the arcade version of NFL Blitz, which was only a 150MHz R5000 CPU. Even the fastest PC around will only do 20-30% speed, and that is with a dynamic recompilation CPU core.

And before anyone claims that MS programmers could do better, the person that did that part of MAME works for MS in their VirtualPC division

 

[AlNom]

Well thankfully the #1 game on their emulation list is Halo 2. Thankfully because it pushed the XBOX console to the extreme in terms of graphical effects/features/etc. If they can nail emu on that, they can probably do anything given the commitment based on their Halo 2 emulation.

I would love to see those cutscenes in HD


.......so is DOA Volleyball on the list?

 

[phat]

It sounds like it's going to be a highly labour-intensive, per-title, imperfect sort of emulation. Like Bleem.

 

[Ruined]

The reason I believe this is that true emulation of such a fast system as Xbox would be extremely slow. Look at MAME running the arcade version of NFL Blitz, which was only a 150MHz R5000 CPU. Even the fastest PC around will only do 20-30% speed, and that is with a dynamic recompilation CPU core.

And before anyone claims that MS programmers could do better, the person that did that part of MAME works for MS in their VirtualPC division

Some big differences here though. First, MAME programmers do their work for free; they therefore likely are working on limited time with limited financial resources. Second, most games are emulated by only one or two people. Third, MAME programmers often do not have as much access to info about the hardware they are emulating as Microsoft programmers would about XBOX hardware. Fourth, MAME does not have direct access to the PC hardware and do not have a specific hardware platform they can code for.

Those working on BC for XBOX360 will have none of these problems.

 

[Reznor007]

The reason I believe this is that true emulation of such a fast system as Xbox would be extremely slow. Look at MAME running the arcade version of NFL Blitz, which was only a 150MHz R5000 CPU. Even the fastest PC around will only do 20-30% speed, and that is with a dynamic recompilation CPU core.

And before anyone claims that MS programmers could do better, the person that did that part of MAME works for MS in their VirtualPC division

Some big differences here though. First, MAME programmers do their work for free; they therefore likely are working on limited time with limited financial resources. Second, most games are emulated by only one or two people. Third, MAME programmers often do not have as much access to info about the hardware they are emulating as Microsoft programmers would about XBOX hardware. Fourth, MAME does not have direct access to the PC hardware and do not have a specific hardware platform they can code for.

Those working on BC for XBOX360 will have none of these problems.

1. That has nothing to do with the speed
2. Also nothing to do with speed
3. every bit of hardware used in Blitz has full programming manuals/datasheets available
4. What? All of MAME is done on the CPU..do PC programs not have access to the CPU or something? Everything in MAME is CPU limited, even on an Athlon64 or the newest G5. Having advanced video hardware doesn't help.

 

[ninelven]

erased

 

[Reznor007]

So explain to me how a 3.2GHz non-out of order* PPC is going to emulate a 733MHz P3+Soundstorm+233MHz NV2a full speed when a 3.6GHz P4 can't even run a 150MHz R5000+16MHz ADSP2115+50MHz Voodoo1 at half speed?

*this information I got from a MAME developer who is a programmer as his main job

"Moreover the cores aren't out-of-order, so it should do particularly poorly on MAME-style code. "

 

[jvd]

So explain to me how a 3.2GHz non-out of order* PPC is going to emulate a 733MHz P3+Soundstorm+233MHz NV2a full speed when a 3.6GHz P4 can't even run a 150MHz R5000+16MHz ADSP2115+50MHz Voodoo1 at half speed?

*this information I got from a MAME developer who is a programmer as his main job

"Moreover the cores aren't out-of-order, so it should do particularly poorly on MAME-style code. "

well you have 3 3.2 gh z cores giving you 118gflops of performance vs the what 2.8 of the celron 733 . You also have a 500mhz r500 which should have all of the features of the nv2a and more .

I don't think it will be that hard actually

 

[Reznor007]

well you have 3 3.2 gh z cores giving you 118gflops of performance vs the what 2.8 of the celron 733 . You also have a 500mhz r500 which should have all of the features of the nv2a and more .

I don't think it will be that hard actually

But you can't just run the games on the new hardware. I'm sure if you just passed say, Halo's T&L calcs to the ATI chip it would crash, as the 2 chips don't work the same way. I mean, nvidia's drivers won't work on ATI's cards, why would XB1 stuff work on XB360 stuff?

The flops rating doesn't really matter either, as again, you aren't just running the game, you have to make the PPC appear to be a P3. Not to mention that a single core would be running a single emulation thread. Parallel processing won't help in a situation where something needs serially executed data. You can't just take 3 emulated opcodes, split them up, and expect it to work since many of the opcodes require the previous one to be done already and base it's operation on that data.