All 3 Consoles Are Backwards Compatible!
DOOManiac
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">A mile stone in gaming history</div>Today w/ the PS3's unveiling, Sony announced backwards compatibility w/ PS2 and PS1 games. Also today, MS announced that the X-Box 360 would indeed be backwards compatible with X-Box 1. And of course the big N committed to backwards compatibility months ago.
That means all three major consoles of the next generation will all be compatible with the existing library of all three major consoles of this generation. This is unprescedented in video game history and I'm sure will be a move that will have a great impact on future systems down the line (such as the X-Box 3 and PS4).
For one, customers will be much more likely to transition to a new console knowing their old stack of games will not go unloved (at least not by the fault of the system). In turn, this will set a higher tolerence for more frequent upgrades of the system itself to a newer version. X-Box 3 and PS4 may come as early as 2007 or 2008 if market trends show that customers wouldn't mind shelling out another $300 or so for fancier graphics as long as they could keep their old games.
Of course if they aren't too careful they'll get into the state that PC games are in right now, where you have a market w/ an array of different hardware, and some will run your game and some will not. It's an interesting prediciment, and I think it'll be interested to see how console manufactorers go with this one.
That means all three major consoles of the next generation will all be compatible with the existing library of all three major consoles of this generation. This is unprescedented in video game history and I'm sure will be a move that will have a great impact on future systems down the line (such as the X-Box 3 and PS4).
For one, customers will be much more likely to transition to a new console knowing their old stack of games will not go unloved (at least not by the fault of the system). In turn, this will set a higher tolerence for more frequent upgrades of the system itself to a newer version. X-Box 3 and PS4 may come as early as 2007 or 2008 if market trends show that customers wouldn't mind shelling out another $300 or so for fancier graphics as long as they could keep their old games.
Of course if they aren't too careful they'll get into the state that PC games are in right now, where you have a market w/ an array of different hardware, and some will run your game and some will not. It's an interesting prediciment, and I think it'll be interested to see how console manufactorers go with this one.
Comments
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->...
Along with a firm release date and price point, the other big question surrounding the 360 was backward compatibility with the library of games from the original Xbox. Robbie Bach, senior vice president and chief Xbox officer in the Home and Entertainment Division at Microsoft, made Xbox fans around the world happy when he announced that the 360 will indeed play Xbox games.
...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><a href='http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124746.html' target='_blank'>Source</a>
(It's in the middle)
[edit]
Nevermind, looks like you're right, just saw this on Shacknews:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> * Xbox 360 will have limited backward compatability. Only the most popular Xbox games will be supported, through an emulator.
* Square Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XI on the 360, with Live support.
* More than 160 games are in development.
* During a 90 day launch window Microsoft hopes that between 25 and 40 Xbox 360 games are released.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
:/
Oh well, as long as 1 of those games is Ninja Gaiden I really don't give a crap about all the other ones. :P
My last statement regarding Ninja Gaiden still holds true though. It's the only X-Box game worth emulating anyway. :P
[edit]
Nevermind, looks like you're right, just saw this on Shacknews:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> * Xbox 360 will have limited backward compatability. Only the most popular Xbox games will be supported, through an emulator.
* Square Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XI on the 360, with Live support.
* More than 160 games are in development.
* During a 90 day launch window Microsoft hopes that between 25 and 40 Xbox 360 games are released.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
:/
Oh well, as long as 1 of those games is Ninja Gaiden I really don't give a crap about all the other ones. :<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ya i find that kinda lame. why not make all games backward compatible. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
[edit]
Nevermind, looks like you're right, just saw this on Shacknews:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> * Xbox 360 will have limited backward compatability. Only the most popular Xbox games will be supported, through an emulator.
* Square Enix is releasing Final Fantasy XI on the 360, with Live support.
* More than 160 games are in development.
* During a 90 day launch window Microsoft hopes that between 25 and 40 Xbox 360 games are released.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
:/
Oh well, as long as 1 of those games is Ninja Gaiden I really don't give a crap about all the other ones. :<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ya i find that kinda lame. why not make all games backward compatible. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, the way Sony (and probably Nintendo, too, although we don't know yet) does it is that it includes an entire PS1 inside of its PS2s (and presumably an entire PS1 and PS2 inside its PS3s). Microsoft released the Xbox more recently than the other two systems and it's the most expensive one to create. To fit it inside the Xbox2, it would have to be greatly miniaturized, and it would still add a great deal to the cost of the system. Therefore, Microsoft would have to write some software to run Xbox games on the Xbox2 hardware. I play my PS1 games on my laptop when I'm on trips, and let me tell you that running console games on a system that they're not designed to run on is hard. It usually works, but the graphics are often buggy or slow (it's slow even though my laptop has 30x the mhz and 128x the RAM). Microsoft probably doesn't want to add backwards compatibility, unless they can guarantee that the games will run without severe bugs. Therefore, they'd have to test every single game. It's easier just to test a few games and have software that can be customized for each game they want to emulate.
X-Box 360 though is limited pretty much to emulation. Since 360 uses PPC cpu's instead of intel, and because it uses ATI chipset instead of NVidia, interpretting the instruction set is out of the question. The chipsets are too different at a fundamental level. And obviously the x-box 1 hardware can't be installed alongside the 360's for reasons of space constraints, heat, and power consumption, not to mention cost.
That leaves emulation as the only means of achieving backwards compatibility, and like all forms of emulation getting it perfect is very, very hard. The plus side is that since emulation is entirely software based there is a good chance that in the future the 360 can download a firmware upgrade from Live to give it better emulation (whether that involves running more games, fixing bugs, or general speed improvements)