Xbox 360 - Backwards Compatible

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

Several news sites, including Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124746.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6124746) are reporting that Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible with "top-selling" original Xbox games.

While Sony has successfully offered backwards compatibility throughout its Playstation line, Microsoft's plan is a bit more ambitious... as the current Xbox and upcoming Xbox 360 use different processor architectures. The original Xbox was run on an Intel processor while the new Xbox will sport a PowerPC processor.

Readers will remember, however, that Microsoft acquired Virtual PC from Connectix (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030219155858.shtml) back in February 2003. Xbox titles will likely be emulated by the new console. Virtual PC is still offered for the Mac from Microsoft.

If all true, a "Virtual Xbox" would certainly be a feasible Mac software product in the future -- but perhaps an unlikely one to come from Microsoft.

[pimentoLoaf]

Goody on the backwards compatibility. :) All those nice racing simulators will still work.

[biohazard6969]

this could also mean that virtual pc would need to run rele fast and support some sort of 3d graphics, so could we maybe see a nice VPC upgrade soon?

[jaseone]

Since when did Virtual PC do anything graphics related even close to well enough to run an Xbox game? It doesn't even have DirectX support does it?

As I have read elsewhere I think it is much more likely that those top games are going to have to be recompiled under the PowerPC architecture so while it is technically backwards compatible as it is the same game it is sounding like you won't be able to just use your old Xbox discs to play it.

[oskar]

Virtual PC has always been very slow with graphics. I heard that version 7 was to come with the ability to use the video card directly from a Mac, but I guess Microsoft didn't like that idea too much. That would allow Mac users to really be able to play PC games with higher video requirements.

It would be cool if you could play XBox games on a Mac, though.

[SeaFox]

*Yawn* I'm not that impressed.

Nintendo's Revolution is going to be backward compatable with all it's past consoles - ALL of them. Yes, I mean you'll be able to play Game Cube, N64, Super Nntendo and 8-bit NES games on it.

[mlrproducts]

PS3 for me, please.

No wonder they can't play but only the "top selling games", their emulation software is HORRIBLE and slow!

[Marble]

I'll be really interested to see what all this means for the Macintosh itself and its ability to emulate. I couldn't care less about the XBox, though.

[Mac Matrix]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

Several news sites, including Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_6124746.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6124746) are reporting that Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible with "top-selling" original Xbox games.
Guess that means only Halo and Halo 2. :D

[madamimadam]

*Yawn* I'm not that impressed.

Nintendo's Revolution is going to be backward compatable with all it's past consoles - ALL of them. Yes, I mean you'll be able to play Game Cube, N64, Super Nntendo and 8-bit NES games on it.

Too bad 90% of Nintendo games are as compelling as Celine Dion.

Oh, if only I could get a Microsoft console that plays all Sega games.

[BornAgainMac]

Microsoft crippled Virtual PC for the Mac. I am sure their emulation on Xbox will be what the Mac version could have been.

[polyesterlester]

*Yawn* I'm not that impressed.

Nintendo's Revolution is going to be backward compatable with all it's past consoles - ALL of them. Yes, I mean you'll be able to play Game Cube, N64, Super Nntendo and 8-bit NES games on it.

You're kidding, right? I knew it could play GameCube games, and DVDs with an attachment, but that's it, right? How will they do the rest?

[Josh396]

You're kidding, right? I knew it could play GameCube games, and DVDs with an attachment, but that's it, right? How will they do the rest?
I think it's still pure speculation. There were rumors that there may be an attachment or that you would be able to download the top 100 games for previous systems. I would love to see it totally backwards compatible.

[daveL]

There will probably be a big "gotcha" that nobody understands until they've bought the damn thing. Lies, lies and more lies. Emulate x86 console games on PPC, right. Hey, I've got a bridge for sale, anyone interested?

[mj_1903]

You're kidding, right? I knew it could play GameCube games, and DVDs with an attachment, but that's it, right? How will they do the rest?

GameCube games are built in.

Nintendo has a history of making really small but efficient emulators particularly for the GameBoy line. The DS for instance has an emulator for GBA games. They will do something similar for revolution.

As for the 360 emulation, they are using no code from VPC and what they are doing is highly hardware specific so you wont see any of it being placed into VPC in the future.

[Ti_Poussin]

That's probably the goal to have brought Connetix VPC, but I doubt we will see signifiant upgrade to VPC for Mac. Microsoft will do a custom version of VPC for the XBox 360 (for it's hardware specific), it doesn't mean they will port the technology to VPC for Mac and I doubt they will do it, they cripple all they software for Mac, common Office nearly faster on VPC then it do in OSX directly; MSN doesn't have any worthy features, eat resource like hell and he's slow like a turtle with no leg; Windows Media Player for OSX anybody? doesn't even play all there own format in it.

If you're hoping to see a good version of VPC, you better learn programming and make it yourself, cause from Microsoft it can be a long wait to see something worth it. By the way, bring us a good version of iChat with real MSN support (no jabber, locked features) or any well do MSN supported appz with video and audio conference, so I can communicate with all the sheep from Windows world that use the default stuff. That's the only appz of Microsoft I still use. Please don't talk me about Mercury, it's bloat as hell. Fire? not bad but not really better then MSN (but support a lot of protocole, but I don't use them). aMSN not bad but not good. Let pass the other in developpement.

Windows on Mac, maybe Guest PC (was bluelabel) will become something, they make a good start let's see where they bring it. MacBochs, humm ok, let pass over even for geek who can set it up. QemuX (Qemu version os X) maybe a good hope, I haven't try it yet, anybody can comment on this one? iEmulator is base on Qemu.

And our best hope are.... DarWINE. Still under progress, but I believe they need a lot of help, I wish I was able to help them :(

But I believe I'm gona see a flying cow before Microsoft update VPC with decent features, not a new copyright and G5 or Tiger support, ok that's great but is it all that can be done since the time they brought it? they have the source code of windows, no? can't they make some more tweak? AHHhummm.

Back to the subject, it's a good thing that the XBox is backward compatible, all XBox owner will be happy with that.

[AidenShaw]

Virtual PC has always been very slow with graphics. I heard that version 7 was to come with the ability to use the video card directly from a Mac, but I guess Microsoft didn't like that idea too much. That would allow Mac users to really be able to play PC games with higher video requirements.

It would be cool if you could play XBox games on a Mac, though.

Since the Xbox and Xbox360 share an NT heritage, it wouldn't be necessary to do much emulation on operating system calls. The x86 system call would be "massaged" into a native call and passed to the native systems. This is called "thunking", and has been used in NT since the beginning. (16-bit DOS calls were thunked into native Win32 calls in the NTVDM)

If the native Xbox(1) graphics library were also ported to the Xbox360, then graphics calls could be thunked as well. (Or, perhaps the Xbox1 graphics calls could be thunked to the native Xbox360 architecture.)

Instruction set emulation would still be needed for the game logic - but system calls and graphics could run at full speed.

[AidenShaw]

Microsoft crippled Virtual PC for the Mac.

Don't you mean Apple crippled Virtual PC by choosing a processor (the PPC 970) that didn't conform to the PowerPC Book E architecture?

Connectix made a big performance improvement by utilizing the little-endian support defined in the PowerPC standard. The PPC 970 didn't implement that standard, therefore Virtual PC suffered.

How much do you want to bet that the Book E little-endian features are in the Xbox 360 CPUs ????

[Gimzotoy]

I don't see how Microsoft's backwards compatibility is any more ambitious than either of its two competitors. Sony made an architecture change too, but we aren't going on about that, either. The GameCube is using a similar architecture, but is supposed to be compatible much farther back through multiple hardware iterations (probably software emulation). Hell, I'd say Microsoft's backwards compatibility plan is much LESS ambitious than Nintendo's.

Consoles change architectures. Often with every iteration. The only real reason I see that this would even be worth mentioning is the rumor that they are using Virtual PC technology... and we all know how fast that runs. In my opinion, Microsoft would have been smarter to steal a page from Sony and used a Celeron in some secondary capacity within the system that could take over when playing old XBox games. Unfortunately, I suppose, that wouldn't help them with the video card switch.

Anyway, I don't know exactly what my point was. I guess that I don't see MS's approach as anything novel...

[Surreal]

Rewvolutions backward compatibility is not speculation
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/17/nintendo/index.php

[Horrortaxi]

Why and how do you support only the best selling games? From a technical standpoint, shouldn't they all work if one of them works? Every single one of my PS1 games plays on PS2 regardless of how many units it sold.

Let's get technical in a Microsoft legaleze way. Do they say they'll have backward compatibility with Xbox discs or with Xbox titles? Given my confusion from the above paragraph I have to wonder if they'll sell you, at additional cost, an Xbox 360 compatible version of Halo or whatever the best selling titles are.

You've got to watch them on stuff like this--they're sneaky.

[DavidLeblond]

"Top selling" XBox games means if you want to play, say Halo, you put the Halo disc in and most likely the box will download the newly compiled Halo executable through XBox Live. You'll still need the disc for the data, of course.

Of course thats just a guess, but it would be a lot easier than trying to run Halo through Virtual PC... thats just retarded. :rolleyes:

[MrMacMan]

I give 0% feasibility to the 'Virtual PC as Xbox emulator'

too many things wrong...

VPC = slow. No matter how many chips you got in the xbox 360 it can't do it.
VPC = No graphics support. ... no graphics = no games...

Microsoft acquiring VPC has nothing at all to do with this. no doubt Microsoft will find another way of doing it.

[Gimzotoy]

Why and how do you support only the best selling games? From a technical standpoint, shouldn't they all work if one of them works? Every single one of my PS1 games plays on PS2 regardless of how many units it sold.

Well, the reason all the PS1 games play on the PS2 is because the PS2 actually has the main PS1 chip on the board (I think it was relegated to the menial task of handling controller inputs). When you insert a PS1 game, it uses that chip as the main processor, so no real emulation occurs. Basically, you could say that the PS2 contains a PS1, though that's technically not correct.

The likely reason the XBox backwards compatibility is compatible with "top titles" is that they will be emulated in software. The software will be optimized for the big titles like Halo, allowing those titles to run better, possibly at the expense of lesser titles. Also, since the graphics cards are entirely different between the two systems, any games that handle the video card in a non-standard way (sometimes developers implement little technically-incorrect hardware hacks to squeeze out extra performance) will probably be broken.

[Ti_Poussin]

Don't you mean Apple crippled Virtual PC by choosing a processor (the PPC 970) that didn't conform to the PowerPC Book E architecture?

Connectix made a big performance improvement by utilizing the little-endian support defined in the PowerPC standard. The PPC 970 didn't implement that standard, therefore Virtual PC suffered.

How much do you want to bet that the Book E little-endian features are in the Xbox 360 CPUs ????

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but maybe you can light me up on this one (it's not a joke or sarcass). I did a little search and found those link:
http://www.answers.com/topic/powerpc they said the 970 support little-endian?!?
ok, I found it on IBM web site finally,
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/AE818B5D1DBB02EC87256DDE00007821/$file/970FX_user_manual_v1.41.pdf
ok confirm it doesn't support little-endian

Is that suppose to be a big deal? isn't just an order to manipulate stuff?!? Sorry don't know what it really does?? Can you point me to an article that discuss about it deeply? I only found stupid stuff for dummy! Thanks

[SFVCyclone]

so who came up with this connection between VPC and Xbox? quite insteresting though.

[Booga]

1. If we didn't see an XBox emulator for x86 Windows, we're not going to see one for PowerPC Mac.
2. VirtualPC is slow because all graphics are emulated. It's not unreasonable for Microsoft to write native PPC calls for graphics and a native, hardware-accelerated version of DirectX8. This is now NT ran 16-bit software, and how the original PowerMacs ran 680x0 software.
3. Can we stop talking about the XBox 360? As a game console, it's the least impressive of the three next-generations. The PS3 has a Cell... now that's what I'd like to see carried over to the Mac... a non-symmetrical multiprocessing machine with a 97x and a Cell, and all the Core Image stuff ported to Cell units.

[daveL]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but maybe you can light me up on this one (it's not a joke or sarcass). I did a little search and found those link:
http://www.answers.com/topic/powerpc they said the 970 support little-endian?!?
ok, I found it on IBM web site finally,
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/AE818B5D1DBB02EC87256DDE00007821/$file/970FX_user_manual_v1.41.pdf
ok confirm it doesn't support little-endian

Is that suppose to be a big deal? isn't just an order to manipulate stuff?!? Sorry don't know what it really does?? Can you point me to an article that discuss about it deeply? I only found stupid stuff for dummy! Thanks
It means you have to byte-swap and word-swap, as appropriate, because the data are organized little-endian vs big-endian. Think about in terms of written languages, where one reads left-to-right and another reads right-to-left. It's somewhat different, since we are talking numbers here, so one "language" has its smallest number to the right, while the other has its smallest number (least significant digit) to the left. If the native data stream isn't the same as the native processor alignment, you have to spend a lot of energy (work, cpu instructions) swapping data around to order them correctly.

[fry]

Latest word is that it's not emulation... the games have to be re-compiled, so David Leblond's post sounds most likely.

[ZildjianKX]

1. If we didn't see an XBox emulator for x86 Windows, we're not going to see one for PowerPC Mac.
2. VirtualPC is slow because all graphics are emulated. It's not unreasonable for Microsoft to write native PPC calls for graphics and a native, hardware-accelerated version of DirectX8. This is now NT ran 16-bit software, and how the original PowerMacs ran 680x0 software.
3. Can we stop talking about the XBox 360? As a game console, it's the least impressive of the three next-generations. The PS3 has a Cell... now that's what I'd like to see carried over to the Mac... a non-symmetrical multiprocessing machine with a 97x and a Cell, and all the Core Image stuff ported to Cell units.

I'm not exactly sure how the lack of information on the Revolution is more impressive than the Xbox 360...

[zachj]

Maybe Microsoft dug a little and pulled out a copy of NT that ran on PowerPC? One used to be able to buy the little buggers.

Z

[Rocksaurus]

I posted a thread on this very topic 2 days ago.
MacRumors? Or RocksaurusRumors? (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=1465860)
:cool:

"USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION NEWBS!!1"

[w_parietti22]

*Yawn* I'm not that impressed.

Nintendo's Revolution is going to be backward compatable with all it's past consoles - ALL of them. Yes, I mean you'll be able to play Game Cube, N64, Super Nntendo and 8-bit NES games on it.

Really? That would be amazing! You'd have to have a slot load for the Game Cube games, a slot for the N64 games and another for the Super Nintendo games? O and don't forget, the problem with GameCube is that it doesn't hold a full sized disc so you can't play dvds on it and you can't put you CDs on the consol so that you hear your own personal music on the game - So you would have to have a full sized disc area too.

hmm... to me, (I'm not a designer) but it would look like some soort of box with a bunch of holes in it... that wouldn;t llook very good!

[AidenShaw]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but maybe you can light me up on this one (it's not a joke or sarcass).

Fair enough....

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990507S0003

IBM, Motorola write Book E on the PowerPC

David Lammers David Lammers
EE Times (05/07/1999 11:02 AM EDT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Motorola Inc. and IBM Corp. have announced Book E, a jointly written architectural definition and instruction set for embedded 64-bit PowerPC implementations.

Book E may give Motorola and IBM a way to present a common front in both the embedded and desktop sectors. It will build a foundation under system-on-a-chip designs that might incorporate intellectual property (IP) cores sourced from commercial IP vendors, or from the core libraries now under construction at both IBM and Motorola.

Over the next year both companies will come out with next-generation PowerPC controllers that adhere to the Book E definition, and will work to ensure that tool vendors create a common software-development environment. The companies also will offer PowerPC licenses to customers and foundries that want a wider number of sources for high-volume designs."

See also http://news.com.com/2100-1040-225442.html?legacy=cnet


So, Moto and IBM create an architectural definition of what a PowerPC should be, and encourage vendors to "follow the book".


http://encyclopedia.lockergnome.com/s/b/PowerPC (a page or two down, under the heading "Design Features"):

"The PowerPC is designed along RISC principles, and allows for a superscalar implementation. Versions of the design exist in both 32-bit and 64-bit implementations. Starting with the basic POWER specification, the PowerPC added:

Support for operation as in both Big-Endian and Little-Endian modes; the PowerPC can switch from one mode to the other at run-time (see below). This feature is not supported in the PowerPC G5. (This was the reason why Virtual PC took so long to be made functional on G5-based Macintoshes.)"

The next couple of paragraphs explain it in more detail.

See also http://www.shahine.com/omar/CommentView,guid,e706c1bf-87fe-4cd0-aa78-a78ac023cd4a.aspx
__________________________________

So, there was all the hype about a "common, compatible architecture", and Connectix did the work to use one of these defined features to significantly improve VPC's performance.

Then, Apple stupidly (because they didn't realize it) or arrogantly (because they didn't care) chose a non-Book E compliant chip from IBM - the PPC970.

This not only broke Virtual PC for quite some time, but reduced the performance because of the non-standards compliant CPU that Apple chose.

But of course, you often find comments around here that it was something that Microsoft deliberately did to hurt the Mac.


You can also search the web for "virtual pc" g5 "little endian" for lots more on the topic.

[Eric5h5]

The XBox360 is as "backwards compatible" as MS is "innovative." i.e., not at all. They have to recompile games for them to work, which is why only the "top selling" games are going to be "compatible". In other words, they're only going to spend the time and effort to port a few Xbox games, which makes sense given the total lack of real backwards compatibility.

--Eric

[gco212]

Really? That would be amazing! You'd have to have a slot load for the Game Cube games, a slot for the N64 games and another for the Super Nintendo games? O and don't forget, the problem with GameCube is that it doesn't hold a full sized disc so you can't play dvds on it and you can't put you CDs on the consol so that you hear your own personal music on the game - So you would have to have a full sized disc area too.

hmm... to me, (I'm not a designer) but it would look like some soort of box with a bunch of holes in it... that wouldn;t llook very good!

You'll be able to buy the older games (pre-gamecube) on-line, if I'm not mistaken, but there won't be a physical slot for the games. As for Gamecube games, I'd imagine the Revolution's optical drive will be able to hold those small one's in a small part of the normal drive, just like on a computer.

[AidenShaw]

Maybe Microsoft dug a little and pulled out a copy of NT that ran on PowerPC? One used to be able to buy the little buggers.

Note that Windows CE runs on PowerPC, so at least parts of the NT codebase have been kept up to date on PPC.

I would wager that Microsoft has kept the XP fork running on PowerPC all these years. It would be very cheap to do, and would be great insurance. (Note that Apple keeps Darwin on x86 running....)

[admanimal]

You'll be able to buy the older games (pre-gamecube) on-line, if I'm not mistaken, but there won't be a physical slot for the games. As for Gamecube games, I'd imagine the Revolution's optical drive will be able to hold those small one's in a small part of the normal drive, just like on a computer.

Yes that is correct, the old (pre-cube) games will be available to download, presumably for a price. The revolution has built in wifi so it can just connect to some kind of nintendo game store with that through whatever internet service you have (if you have a wifi access point).

[LethalWolfe]

You'll be able to buy the older games (pre-gamecube) on-line, if I'm not mistaken, but there won't be a physical slot for the games. As for Gamecube games, I'd imagine the Revolution's optical drive will be able to hold those small one's in a small part of the normal drive, just like on a computer.


Hmmm... that would suck to have to buy them again if you still had all your old games in boxes or something.


Lethal

[darkmatter05]

Kick ass!

[joeboy_45101]

I believe that this original post is mis-quoted. From what I have read the Xbox 360 will be able to play some of the most popular titles from the original Xbox. I believe what this means is that Microsoft is going to put out some reproduced versions of old Xbox game that will work on the new Xbox 360. So if you already own Halo or Halo 2, you might have to go out and buy a whole new version to play on the Xbox 360. Microsoft might sell these at a low price like Sony does with some of it's most popular older games.

But, to be honest with everybody I am not really impressed by the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3. These machines are going to be more powerful than the average home computer. They are probably going to be more expensive than the average home computer. I mean the graphics chip powering the Playstation 3 is more powerful than 2 Nvidia 6800's working side by side. And two 6800's cost around $500-$600. Plus, the Playstation 3 is going to use BluRay Technology and who knows what effect that wil have on the price. These things are going to be extremely expensive. Maybe the new Nintendo Revolution will come out as the champion because it will be the poor man's next gen video game system. I just think that the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 will feature too much for too much.

[7on]

http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=5aa8631e-d4a0-45d9-a88c-e5931b807091

Here's the official Nintendo link. That and I believe it's going to be $100 cheaper than the 360º (and $280 less than the PS3). I believe there will be a lot of people buying a revolution exclusively for the old classic games.

[Gimzotoy]

I don't know where this "recompiling" rumor has come from, but the XBox360 Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb has stated publicly that the games will be emulated... no download, recompilation, or repurchase necessary.

The XBox360 will be emulating the first XBox's title, probably directly mapping whatever calls it can, and software emulating whatever else is necessary. I would not be surprised to see some of the XBox's supporting chips reprise their roles (or take on different roles) in the new system, a la Sony. However, it does not appear that MS will be putting a Celeron onboard, so there will obviously be some conversion required.

http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/19/no-you-do-not-need-to-recompile-your-xbox-games/

[swissmann]

Virtual PC has always been very slow with graphics. I heard that version 7 was to come with the ability to use the video card directly from a Mac, but I guess Microsoft didn't like that idea too much. That would allow Mac users to really be able to play PC games with higher video requirements.

It would be cool if you could play XBox games on a Mac, though.

Agreed. No way Virtual PC has the kick possible to run those games (I don't care how much hardware you throw at it). Virtual PC could be so much better please Microsoft make it so. Have this development pretty much be one in the same. I wish but don't think it will happen.

[lostboy85]

ehhh.... i can do without the Xbox

[guerro]

Forget backwards compatability and all that other hoo-haw. What I am interested in is how will this affect gaming on the Mac platform? Will games made for the X-Box 360 be easily ported to the Mac? This could be a boon for Mac gaming.

[nsjoker]

Too bad 90% of Nintendo games are as compelling as Celine Dion.

Oh, if only I could get a Microsoft console that plays all Sega games.

what are you talking about?? nintendo games are extremely compelling and original as hell. if you're impressed by a sci-fi shooter and think it's compelling... nevermind. halo has been done before, many times, and with the same success. nintendo at least tries new stuff out, i'll buy a revo over some stupid xbox 360 dell tower anyway. graphics don't make the game, and don't be impressed by all these numbers sony and msft are throwing out, they aren't even final. developers don't even have access to that power yet, they dev kits sent out are crippled as hell using today's technology. at least nintendo is honest and won't release specs until they are 100% official, and when they come out they won't dissapoint. meh, w/e. maybe i'm a nintendo zealot but how can you not be? N invented the rumble pak... stolen by sony, N was first to make 1st party wireless controller.. copied by microsoft... microsoft has too much money already i'm not giving them another cent.

[bbyrdhouse]

Microsoft crippled Virtual PC for the Mac. I am sure their emulation on Xbox will be what the Mac version could have been.


You are probably right. The thing that makes this article/rumor interesting is the fact that VPC will have to be used. I can't see them recompiling that easy.

This will be very interesting to see how all this plays out.

[Sol]

If all true, a "Virtual Xbox" would certainly be a feasible Mac software product in the future -- but perhaps an unlikely one to come from Microsoft.
Why not? They lose money on the console sale but earn it back with software sales. Emulation software would make them money without the loss.

[iSwift]

xbox 360 will be cool, but ps3 will be better

I know, this post was pointless, but I'm tired of the ps2 and xbox. I just want something new.

[jared_kipe]

You'll be able to buy the older games (pre-gamecube) on-line, if I'm not mistaken, but there won't be a physical slot for the games. As for Gamecube games, I'd imagine the Revolution's optical drive will be able to hold those small one's in a small part of the normal drive, just like on a computer.

God thats such bunk, nintendo has been doing that for years, selling games they have previously made on new systems. They shouldn't be ALLOWED to say that it is "compatible with" games if you need to re-buy/download the games. That goes for microsoft too. They shouldn't be so greedy, sure BurgerTime is gonna satisfy 10min of your nostalgia, why not download it for free, its the new games that make money.

[dethbunny]

What if they don't emulate at all? What if they just use some spare space on the included hard drive to house alternate game binaries? That could be a simple explaination for the "backwards compatible with 'top-selling' original Xbox games" remark. It would only be compatible with games it was *specifically* made compatible with.

It's presumable that the XBox360 will run off a modified NT kernel, just like the original XBox. The old games would need to be re-compiled, but that's about it - then you have a "native" XBox360 port of an old XBox game. Since the actual game binary is usually quite small compared to the game data, it wouldn't take much space on the hard drive to provide support for dozens of old games. In addition, since you wouldn't be emulating at all, there would be no speed penalty. In fact, you could do things with the extra hardware, like increase draw distances in Halo or turn up graphical details in other games.

I'm not saying this IS what they did, but it could be the path they chose. It is simpler in the short term, since you don't have to fix an emulation environment - but it does involve soem game-by-game effort. Both approaches have definite advantages.

[evilbert420]

It's been revealed (I can't remember where since I've read literally thousands of message board posts and news articles over the past three days) that Microsoft is going the recompile path with XBOX360, not the emulation path.

Microsoft bought the emulation technology for the servers sitting in the data center, and for rapid software development/test. Virtual Server is key technology for MS's enterprise strategy.

[mac15]

Who is going to buy old games, they need to be recompiled in order to work with the 360. Meaning that you'll need to buy them again, probably at a lower price but buying old games you already own is pretty stupid.

I'd would be cool if they could offer a patch via XBL, but it doesn't seem doable. Imagine downloading a 900mb patch?

[Some_Big_Spoon]

oh come on.. is anyone really surprised by this. It's plainly obvious that M$ is drowning VPC for Mac.. it's a threat and they do what they always do to threats, embrace and extinguish. It's not the arcitecture, it's them being afraid of the Mac.. just like always (while, ironically, admitting that it's better.. several times, directly and indirectly).

Complaining about it, this post included, is pointless. They don't care and nothing can make them care. If Apple wants to put an x86 emulator in MAc, then M$ will crush them, but if M$ wants to use MAcs to run their widgets then you better stay out of their way. Fun. :rolleyes:

[bit density]

Readers will remember, however, that Microsoft acquired Virtual PC from Connectix (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030219155858.shtml) back in February 2003. Xbox titles will likely be emulated by the new console. Virtual PC is still offered for the Mac from Microsoft.

If all true, a "Virtual Xbox" would certainly be a feasible Mac software product in the future -- but perhaps an unlikely one to come from Microsoft.

There is not going to be any virtual Xbox. This is what there will be.

Microsoft will recompile the game engine for the new platform. The game engines are SMALL. What makes up most of the game, are textures, maps and scripts. The actual engine is the small part.

You will pop in your disk of say Halo2 and the operating system will say... Hey this is an old xbox game, do we have the new game engine? Like say on the hard drive as it ships (likely for H1 and H2 and for a few other games as well). Nope... Well then lets download it from xbox live. And it gets the new game engine. Which it then starts, and uses the textures, maps and scripts on the game disk to make the game run. Will this work for all games... No. Will it work for alot of games? Yes... Will it work for any given game if enough effort is put into it? Yes... There is plenty of excess horsepower so that any sort of translation required can easily be added.

This has NEARLY nothing to do with Virtual PC. Though I suspect that there has been alot of expertise on PowerPC performance programming when the ported DirectX and the Windows kernal to the new PPP xbox (don't think for a second they haven't). There will NEVER be a virtual Xbox for the Mac, or the PC. This won't improve VPC performance.

[dancefreak]

I know this is well known already obviously, but took this from the E3 floor today. Playable version of Need For Speed Underground: Most Wanted for the XBOX 360 running off of TWO G5 towers. Just about every person that noticed made joking comments about apple computers being needed to run microsoft's pride and joy.

http://img264.echo.cx/img264/44/xbox360g52km.jpg

[stephenli]

thats why M$ bought VPC
they only need the technology of emulation for its XBox
they have no obligations to benefit mac users
and no obligations to make native graphic card compatability to us, too

and, even doubt they will transplant the "polished" emulation technology back to VPC

[Poff]

Really? That would be amazing! You'd have to have a slot load for the Game Cube games, a slot for the N64 games and another for the Super Nintendo games? O and don't forget, the problem with GameCube is that it doesn't hold a full sized disc so you can't play dvds on it and you can't put you CDs on the consol so that you hear your own personal music on the game - So you would have to have a full sized disc area too.

hmm... to me, (I'm not a designer) but it would look like some soort of box with a bunch of holes in it... that wouldn;t llook very good!

One slot that can take both 8cm and 12cm discs, the rest of the games downloadable. (yes, from NES to N64)

It's official. Nintendo said it themselves. Go read on IGN or something.

The Revolution is gonna rock! Bigtime! I'm getting one. :)

[elmimmo]

so who came up with this connection between VPC and Xbox? quite insteresting though.
People is having quite some facts mixed up. So let's tackle one at a time.

1) VPC has always been slow on games because it only uses the central CPU (G5, G4 or G3) to do all the hardware emulation. The CPU, then, emulates the Pentium-whatever CPU and a crappy S3 graphic card without 3D hardware capabilities. During all that emulation, your flashy powerful 3D card on your real computer remains unused. VPC 7 was supposed to bring 3D hardware emulation through your graphic card. If that was possible your 3D card would be able to free your G5 of some of the load, while being able to run Windows games that require 3D hardware (even if not current ones). MS couldnot add that feature in time so it shipped VPC 7 without the most expected feature.

So fact n0 1: It is not that VPC is slow with 3D games because it is a bad emu, but that the hardware you are using to run the program is not that powerful (a G5 is not powerful enough to emulate the CPU *and* GPU of a decent PC). If VPC could use the hardware GPU to emulate the virtual GPU things could change a bit.

2) MS leaked months ago that it had assigned its XBox team the task to add that much touted feature to Virtual PC for Mac. This is fact n02.

While the reasons for that might simply be that their XBox team is quite experience with the intrinsics of graphic hardware, people started to conclude that if MS could somehow get a Mac's graphic card (lots of times it being an ATI card) emulate a PC graphic card (lots of times it being a nVidia card), making a XBox 360 (which sports a CPU similar to a G5 and an ATI graphic card) emulate an XBox (which sports a Pentium 700 MHz and an nVidia card) would seem trivial. While this is speculation, it seems reasonable for me.

This has succesfully done before. The first batch of nVidia cards used a "glide wrapper" to emulate a 3dfx card (swhich once where the standard), at almost 100%.

3) There is absolutely no official word that games for the XBox 360 would be easily ported to a Mac. While the hardware might be similar, XBox 360 run under a OS, with its own kernel (stripped down WinNT) and graphics libraries (Direct 3D), which nowadays have nothing to do with Macs. While MS could indeed port all those Direct 3D libraries to the Mac, I do not see why they would.

Just my 2¢

[Bonte]

If MS speaks of backwards compatibility they say to work first on Halo and then down to the rest of the games. Strange way to be compatible, are they going to recompile and sell 360 compatible versions of old games? Would be a very bad move but form MS we can expect everything. :confused:

[elmimmo]

I heard that version 7 was to come with the ability to use the video card directly from a Mac, but I guess Microsoft didn't like that idea too much. That would allow Mac users to really be able to play PC games with higher video requirements.

And how would that piss Microsoft off, for christ sake. Miscrosoft sells THE SOFTWARE!!! I just do not get how they could care a bit what hardware you run your Windows on, as long as you poured your money on their pockets to make it legitimate.

[Kushiro]

a continuation of the pic above

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5

[Bonte]

3) There is absolutely no official word that games for the XBox 360 would be easily ported to a Mac. While the hardware might be similar, XBox 360 run under a OS, with its own kernel (stripped down WinNT) and graphics libraries (Direct 3D), which nowadays have nothing to do with Macs. While MS could indeed port all those Direct 3D libraries to the Mac, I do not see why they would.

Game disks typically have the optimized OS stored on the disk itself and just a small rom in de console. If that rom can be emulated then we could use it to start up from the game-disk just as the console does.
No? :confused:

[elmimmo]

If MS speaks of backwards compatibility they say to work first on Halo and then down to the rest of the games. Strange way to be compatible
My take on this is that guaranteeing 100% perfect emulation is a too difficult task unless you just embedd¡ the real hardware in the box and do not emulate at all (the GBA is compatible with GB games just because of that, the GB Micro will not play GB games for the same reason). So they are working for a general purpose emu, that once reached a matured state, they will work on to tune perfect emulation for certain games. Something inbetween of what Bleem did for their PlayStation emulator for the Dreamcast (they released dedicated emulators for particular PlayStation games).

A similar case in the N64 emulation in Gamecube. Nintendo has released Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the Gamecube. People have hacked those and saw that v1 runs "Ocarina of Time" but not "Majora's Mask", while would-be v1.1 can run both and quite some other N64 games, while absolutely not all of the N64 catalog. Seems like Nintendo simply updated the emulator to enhance its emulation as needed, checking against particular games and obviating others that would never be re-released on the GC.

Quite natural, IMHO.

[Bonte]

Its official
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/35368 (Dutch site)

The old games will be recompiled and resold for the 360, oooh the suckers. :p :eek: :eek: :p

[elmimmo]

Its official
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/35368
I cannot see how a news piece speculating like the rest of websites echoing the same, without mentioning a single specific source might make it anything official at all.

[SPUY767]

Don't you mean Apple crippled Virtual PC by choosing a processor (the PPC 970) that didn't conform to the PowerPC Book E architecture?

Connectix made a big performance improvement by utilizing the little-endian support defined in the PowerPC standard. The PPC 970 didn't implement that standard, therefore Virtual PC suffered.

How much do you want to bet that the Book E little-endian features are in the Xbox 360 CPUs ????

No, he got it right. VPC 6 is years faster that VPC 7 on my G5.

[1macker1]

Being backwards compatilble is being able to play YOUR old games, not re-buying them.
Its official
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/35368 (Dutch site)

The old games will be recompiled and resold for the 360, oooh the suckers. :p :eek: :eek: :p
I'll be getting a 360 on day 1.

[myamid]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)
Readers will remember, however, that Microsoft acquired Virtual PC from Connectix (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030219155858.shtml) back in February 2003. Xbox titles will likely be emulated by the new console. Virtual PC is still offered for the Mac from Microsoft.

If this means better performance in futures VPC products for the Mac then this is going to be the first time in my life i'm actually going to wish M$ succeeds at something... Feels a little weird and bittersweet though!

[Bonte]

I cannot see how a news piece speculating like the rest of websites echoing the same, without mentioning a single specific source might make it anything official at all.

The text says that the info comes from MS itself but indeed no further info or sources as usual in this site.

[advocate]

Why not? They lose money on the console sale but earn it back with software sales. Emulation software would make them money without the loss.http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02.html

[webman2k]

*Yawn* I'm not that impressed.

Nintendo's Revolution is going to be backward compatable with all it's past consoles - ALL of them. Yes, I mean you'll be able to play Game Cube, N64, Super Nntendo and 8-bit NES games on it.

Man, is it gonna be hard to fit those NES carts into that little slot! ;)

[stephenli]

People have hacked those and saw that v1 runs "Ocarina of Time" but not "Majora's Mask", while would-be v1.1 can run both and quite some other N64 games, while absolutely not all of the N64 catalog. Seems like Nintendo simply updated the emulator to enhance its emulation as needed, checking against particular games and obviating others that would never be re-released on the GC..

As I remember, "Majora's Mask" is a bit different fm the rest of N64 games, because IT REQUIRED ADDITIONAL RAM UNIT to install on N64!!!!
coz i have bought the game and, quite expensive.....

[stephenli]

a continuation of the pic above

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5


What?! need 2 x G5 to emulate the xBox360?!
that means it may be.....4 x G5 2.7Ghz ?! omg! how much does M$ want to sell xbox?! how much does we pay for our G5?!

[Yvan256]

Too bad 90% of Nintendo games are as compelling as Celine Dion.

Oh, if only I could get a Microsoft console that plays all Sega games.

Hey, as a Canadian, I take offense to that!

Don't insult Nintendo's games! :D

Zelda, Metroid... erm... well, that's enough right there to keep you busy with a few dozen games!

[Gimzotoy]

I cannot see how a news piece speculating like the rest of websites echoing the same, without mentioning a single specific source might make it anything official at all.

Seriously. Especially when a lead XBox developer has alread come out and said the games will be emulated, with no recompiling. Hmm, who to trust. Random websites who don't know what they're talking about or one of the people who helped design the system... tough choice, that one.

[aegisdesign]

oh come on.. is anyone really surprised by this. It's plainly obvious that M$ is drowning VPC for Mac.. it's a threat and they do what they always do to threats, embrace and extinguish. It's not the arcitecture, it's them being afraid of the Mac.. just like always (while, ironically, admitting that it's better.. several times, directly and indirectly).

Complaining about it, this post included, is pointless. They don't care and nothing can make them care. If Apple wants to put an x86 emulator in MAc, then M$ will crush them, but if M$ wants to use MAcs to run their widgets then you better stay out of their way. Fun. :rolleyes:


Why would Microsoft care? They're a software company. Expanding the number of machines that Windows runs on is great for them as you've still got to buy a copy of Windows to run on VirtualPC.

If you just bought a PC with Windows on it, Microsoft would only get the OEM fee for Windows which is much, much less than the retail price.

Microsoft bought Connectix for the ability to run multiple OSs on a single PC. The Mac products were merely a byproduct of the purchase. I'm surprised they released a version of VirtualPC at all although I don't know how much autonomy the old Connectix staff have to do their own thang.

[AidenShaw]

Latest word is that it's not emulation... the games have to be re-compiled, so David Leblond's post sounds most likely.

What latest word? Or just the latest rumour?

For all we know, either or both of the following might be true


Xbox 360 supports emulation of Xbox games - but at much better than "VPC" performance because graphics can be native
Xbox 360 has a "compatibility" library so that Xbox games can be fairly easily recompiled to run at native speeds on Xbox 360 (but only getting the feature set of Xbox)

[AidenShaw]

No, he got it right. VPC 6 is years faster that VPC 7 on my G5.

I find this surprising, since:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;827904

SYMPTOMS
When you try to run Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 on an Apple Power Mac G5 you will receive an error message that informs you that Virtual PC does not support the CPU in your Macintosh computer.

CAUSE
Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 and earlier use a feature that is present in the PowerPC G3 and the PowerPC G4 named "pseudo little-endian mode". Virtual PC for Mac uses pseudo little-endian mode for increased performance when it emulates a Pentium processor. Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 must use pseudo little-endian mode to function.

The new Power Mac G5 processor does not support pseudo little-endian mode. Therefore, the current versions of the Virtual PC for Mac program do not run on the Power Mac G5.

So - it runs faster even though it depends on instructions that aren't present in the G5? Amazing, truly amazing!

[Krevnik]

There will probably be a big "gotcha" that nobody understands until they've bought the damn thing. Lies, lies and more lies. Emulate x86 console games on PPC, right. Hey, I've got a bridge for sale, anyone interested?

The gotcha is that the games are being recompiled, and that you will either have to repurchase them at a discount, or download the recompiled version which uses the original disc for the data.

Hence why it is 'top-selling' games only.

[mcdawson]

2. VirtualPC is slow because all graphics are emulated. It's not unreasonable for Microsoft to write native PPC calls for graphics and a native, hardware-accelerated version of DirectX8. This is now NT ran 16-bit software, and how the original PowerMacs ran 680x0 software.

Virtual PC on the 970 is also slow because IBM didn't implement the little-Endian conversion (mentioned in other posts). Since the XBOX will be a custom chip, they may have had IBM add back in this support AND other custom support that would help this emulation (I can't believe that the XBox PPC's won't have at least little-Endian swap support--that was a big win for Connectix when they used it (were able to use it)). If the XBox DOES have some hw emulation support, whatever VPC changes they make wouldn't necesarily be applicable to the Mac.

[bbyrdhouse]

Ok so the updated rumor now says that there wont be emulation but rather a recompile. This I think would be better because then it would be easier to port them over to Mac platform. (One would think)

[BenRoethig]

What?! need 2 x G5 to emulate the xBox360?!
that means it may be.....4 x G5 2.7Ghz ?! omg! how much does M$ want to sell xbox?! how much does we pay for our G5?!

The CPUs weren't a factor. A single x800XT GPU couldn't do the workload.

[Mr.Hey]

The open source/hacker community will hack the ***** out of it and we'll get our free Xbox 180! :D

[bit density]

Ok so the updated rumor now says that there wont be emulation but rather a recompile. This I think would be better because then it would be easier to port them over to Mac platform. (One would think)

Um... No...

The architecture is different. The API's and operating system are the same.
Hence... xbox -> xbox 360 == recompile
xbox - > mac == recode

[Gimzotoy]

So... remind me again why we are believing some random gaming website when the person who made the quote they used, and the Lead developer on the XBox Live service states that the games will be emulted? :rolleyes: Nice "Update".

[daveL]

What latest word? Or just the latest rumour?

For all we know, either or both of the following might be true


Xbox 360 supports emulation of Xbox games - but at much better than "VPC" performance because graphics can be native
Xbox 360 has a "compatibility" library so that Xbox games can be fairly easily recompiled to run at native speeds on Xbox 360 (but only getting the feature set of Xbox)

The recompile isn't a rumor, AS.

[dancefreak]

From Gamespot today...

RUMOR #2: The Xbox 360 won't be backwards compatible after all.

Source: British industry news siteGamesindustry.biz.

The official story: See below.

What we heard: When Microsoft carefully parsed its words about the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility--saying it will be "backward-compatible with top-selling Xbox games." So when Gamesindustry.biz published an article that the console's radically different hardware couldn't support current-gen Xbox games, accusation perfidy in Remond began to fly. "The solution Microsoft has reached is apparently to recompile current-gen Xbox games so that they can be played on the 360," says G'biz. "First on the list, it says, are the best-selling Halo titles." However, Xbox owners we're the only ones freaking out. The usually recalcitrant Microsoft bypassed its external public relations company, telling GameSpot directly that "Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new 'version'--your original games will work on Xbox 360."

Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus.

[Bonte]

From Gamespot today...

"Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new 'version'--your original games will work on Xbox 360."

Then how do we get the newly recompiled games, put them all on a HD and unlock them with the original CD?

[canadianmacguy]

The recompile isn't a rumor, AS.


According to Major Nelson, it is false (no recompile needed):

Major Nelson says no recompile (http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/19/no-you-do-not-need-to-recompile-your-xbox-games/)

[GFLPraxis]

You're kidding, right? I knew it could play GameCube games, and DVDs with an attachment, but that's it, right? How will they do the rest?

I think it's still pure speculation. There were rumors that there may be an attachment or that you would be able to download the top 100 games for previous systems. I would love to see it totally backwards compatible.


Nintendo ANNOUNCED ONSTAGE you could DOWNLOAD every single NES, SNES, and N64 games.

The caps are just for clarification. It's no speculation or rumor.

[GFLPraxis]

According to Major Nelson, it is false (no recompile needed):

Major Nelson says no recompile (http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/19/no-you-do-not-need-to-recompile-your-xbox-games/)

All he says there is that you won't need to re-purchase games. What prevents a downloadable patch that contains a PowerPC binary, but you still play off your original disk?

[jared_kipe]

Nintendo ANNOUNCED ONSTAGE you could DOWNLOAD every single NES, SNES, and N64 games.

The caps are just for clarification. It's no speculation or rumor.

Did they announce what ungodly amounts of money they will be taking to download these ****** 20 year old games?

[Bonte]

All he says there is that you won't need to re-purchase games. What prevents a downloadable patch that contains a PowerPC binary, but you still play off your original disk?

So i need a HD based 360 and internet connection to play old games, that sucks. It will hurt the sales for sure but with the shortage in the beginning its maybe not that bad for M$. I'l wait a few years unless they find a fine way to run Linux or osX on it.

[milzay]

So if they are using G5s to run these games why are the games on current G5s running so ****.
Also if these games are working on a Mac how hard would it be to code the game from XBox 360 format - G5 format. Doesnt this just mean that we get rid of a lot of crap porting which slows down games with bloated code. Therefore games can be ported from 360 format to G5 rather than from X86 PC to G5.
Something like that.

[dancefreak]

So i need a HD based 360 and internet connection to play old games, that sucks. It will hurt the sales for sure but with the shortage in the beginning its maybe not that bad for M$. I'l wait a few years unless they find a fine way to run Linux or osX on it.

Every 360 will have a 20 gig hard drive. They are removable and can be upgraded in the future, but there won't be a version w/ no drive. As for online, xbox live silver is going to be free. So you won't need to pay for any sort of membership to download things like patches. So if anything needs to be downloaded to play an old game, the 360 should be ready to do that out of the box and no additional cost.

[BWhaler]

So, the whole backwards compatibility thing is basically I lie.

A lie from Microsoft? I am as shocked as you are.

Having to recompile software and re-burn the disk does not make the playing hardware backwards compatible.

How exactly is this going work? How would I get re-compiled games? Would I have to pay?

Yup, they are using semantics to justify their lies.

[GFLPraxis]

The gotcha is that the games are being recompiled, and that you will either have to repurchase them at a discount, or download the recompiled version which uses the original disc for the data.

Hence why it is 'top-selling' games only.

Precisely as I predicted last week in this thread!
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=127320

Wow, I was actually right :eek:

[GFLPraxis]

So, the whole backwards compatibility thing is basically I lie.

A lie from Microsoft? I am as shocked as you are.

Having to recompile software and re-burn the disk does not make the playing hardware backwards compatible.

How exactly is this going work? How would I get re-compiled games? Would I have to pay?

Yup, they are using semantics to justify their lies.

I suspect you download a 'patch' that is actually a recompiled binary.

Only top selling games will have these patches available.

The patch, basicly, the binary, runs off the hard drive and uses the game data from the disk.

[GFLPraxis]

God thats such bunk, nintendo has been doing that for years, selling games they have previously made on new systems. They shouldn't be ALLOWED to say that it is "compatible with" games if you need to re-buy/download the games. That goes for microsoft too. They shouldn't be so greedy, sure BurgerTime is gonna satisfy 10min of your nostalgia, why not download it for free, its the new games that make money.

They didn't say if it was free or not. All they said was that you will be able to download every NES, SNES, or N64 games. No mention of free or not.

[GFLPraxis]

Every 360 will have a 20 gig hard drive. They are removable and can be upgraded in the future, but there won't be a version w/ no drive. As for online, xbox live silver is going to be free. So you won't need to pay for any sort of membership to download things like patches. So if anything needs to be downloaded to play an old game, the 360 should be ready to do that out of the box and no additional cost.

We don't know that yet. Microsoft has not made any announcements of pricing or different models, just that it will be available with a 20 gig hard drive. No mention that it is built in the base model or not.

[dancefreak]

We don't know that yet. Microsoft has not made any announcements of pricing or different models, just that it will be available with a 20 gig hard drive. No mention that it is built in the base model or not.

While they haven't made pricing announcements, they have said that a "Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive" will be standard as noted in their spec sheet.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

They have a separate page for accessory specs, which is where it would be if it was not included.

[Lacero]

How about the XBox 360 compiles the game on first launch of an old XBox title, instead of having the general consumer do the task of searching for and downloading a re-compiled game? Seems like an offal waste of time and money to have to send out the millions of copies of re-compiled games. Perhaps make it manditory to buy the HD in order to play backwards compatible games. It could be a patch of sorts.

[Fukui]

How about the XBox 360 compiles the game on first launch of an old XBox title, instead of having the general consumer do the task of searching for and downloading a re-compiled game?
Heavily branched code makes this not very feasible.

...And silver is only free on the weekends.

[Booga]

Can we get back to Mac rumors soon, MacRumors?

[joeboy_45101]

What I don't understand about this whole situation is how can Microsoft and Sony have so much influence on companies like IBM, ATI, and Nvidia to basically force them to produce some of the most powerful and amazing technology on the planet. Yet Apple has to be fed whatever is coming down the line. Both of the machines make a brand new Dual 2.7Ghz G5 PowerMac look like junk, I am talking about the tech specs here not the external casing.

I am very jealous now, and I don't like to be jealous. I am a Mac user, my machine should be making people jealous. If Sony and Microsoft can get special triple-core CPU's and CELL processors then why can't Apple. If Sony and Microsoft can get special Graphics Cards that can totally blow you away then why can't Apple.

[dancefreak]

...And silver is only free on the weekends.

did you just make that up now? because it's certainly not true.

[AHDuke99]

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=656

anyone remember that? wonder if there will be any truth to the rumor.

[AidenShaw]

I am very jealous now, and I don't like to be jealous. I am a Mac user, my machine should be making people jealous.

Are we identifying with the machine a bit too much? :o

It's just a tool, not an iCon....

[joeboy_45101]

Are we identifying with the machine a bit too much? :o

It's just a tool, not an iCon....

It's all about the box. I am a firm believer that the software has to be great, but it's still all about the box. The total package, it's design, and the way it works. The processor in the Xbox 360 is a not so distant cousin to the current G5. Hell, all of the demos at E3 for the Xbox 360 are being run on PowerMac G5's. And the things that I have seen from the CELL processor are absolutely mind-blowing.

It would be a dream to see something from Apple and IBM that could actually be called the world's most powerful personal computer. Maybe two dual-core G5 processors running at 3.2Ghz or some type of CELL processor made up like a G6. And one of those new Graphics Processors from ATI or Nvidia. Pack all of that into a PowerMac and then I will be impressed.

[Anarcho-Commie]

It would be a dream to see something from Apple and IBM that could actually be called the world's most powerful personal computer. Maybe two dual-core G5 processors running at 3.2Ghz or some type of CELL processor made up like a G6. And one of those new Graphics Processors from ATI or Nvidia. Pack all of that into a PowerMac and then I will be impressed.

jesus. these systems are coming out NEXT YEAR!!!! ya dumbass. the demos that these new consoles are running on are using POWERMAC G5s. get a clue. in december when the 360 comes out and in the SPRING OF 06 and the SUMMER OF 06 for the nintendo revolution, look at what the powermacs will be. christ.

[Eric_Z]

1) Why is this on the front page of Macrumors.com?

2)

While Sony has successfully offered backwards compatibility throughout its Playstation line, Microsoft's plan is a bit more ambitious... as the current Xbox and upcoming Xbox 360 use different processor architectures. The original Xbox was run on an Intel processor while the new Xbox will sport a PowerPC processor.

Bull, the PS2 used a MIPS based CPU, and NOT a PPC ISA one. Not to mention the horror of writing the emu for the Emotion engine *shudders*.

[Bye Bye Baby]

You bet!!!!

[elmimmo]

how can Microsoft and Sony have so much influence on companies like IBM, ATI, and Nvidia

Sony has sold around 90 million PlayStation 2 so far. Apple is simply a wimp making computers in a garage next to that.

[joeboy_45101]

jesus. these systems are coming out NEXT YEAR!!!! ya dumbass. the demos that these new consoles are running on are using POWERMAC G5s. get a clue. in december when the 360 comes out and in the SPRING OF 06 and the SUMMER OF 06 for the nintendo revolution, look at what the powermacs will be. christ.

Wow! You're a real class act. It's amazing to me how many people buy into this whole Culture of Stupid being sold to the public right now.

I wasn't stating anything that really hasn't been stated before in previous threads. The PowerMac line is ironically underpowered. People don't want incremental updates, they want something amazing. The hardware inside the Xbox and Playstation 3 are breath-taking. These are not incremental steps. It seems to me that Apple is playing politics with it's customers, I don't understand the logic. They just don't seem to want to have the fastest and greatest machine possible in their arsenal. And unfortunately it doesn't seem like IBM wants to push the PowerPC platform to it's limits with the chips they are providing Apple. If it wasn't for Apple's commitment to the PowerPC architecture in the past then there probably wouldn't be any use or mention of it today.

[GFLPraxis]

While they haven't made pricing announcements, they have said that a "Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive" will be standard as noted in their spec sheet.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

They have a separate page for accessory specs, which is where it would be if it was not included.

Right, but there could easily be two versions as rumored, one with the hard drive and one without. Thats why we need pricing. There could be one at $299 without and one at $399 with, and thats why it is listed.

[GFLPraxis]

1) Why is this on the front page of Macrumors.com?

2)



Bull, the PS2 used a MIPS based CPU, and NOT a PPC ISA one. Not to mention the horror of writing the emu for the Emotion engine *shudders*.

True, but Sony might pull a PS1 and include the previous console's processor in the new one. The PS3 might have a PS2 processor inside the box and emulate the PS1. Just a guess. Otherwise...

Using the Cell to emulate the Emotion engine seems...problematic. At least they don't have the graphics card incompatabilities Microsoft has, and the Emotion Engine is much slower than the XBox.

[GFLPraxis]

did you just make that up now? because it's certainly not true.

It certainly is true. Look at Microsoft's XBox web site. Silver offers free downloads, Gold is for online play. Silver will allow online play on the weekends though.

To quote:

Xbox Live: Xbox Live is where games and entertainment come alive, the only unified place where you can play with anyone, anytime, anywhere. And the best just got better. Connect your Xbox 360 to your broadband connection and get instant access to Xbox Live Silver. Express your digital identity through your Gamertag and gamer card, talk with others using voice chat, and access Xbox Live Marketplace—all right out of the box, at no extra cost. Upgrade to Xbox Live Gold and enter the exciting world of multiplayer online gaming. With intelligent matchmaking, access to all your achievements and statistics, video chat and video messaging, and an enormous selection of games, Xbox Live Gold delivers your competition, on your terms.

[Bonte]

Right, but there could easily be two versions as rumored, one with the hard drive and one without. Thats why we need pricing. There could be one at $299 without and one at $399 with, and thats why it is listed.

The price is going to be higher than we normally would expect for consoles, more than probably in the 600 to 1000$ range depending on the PS3 and model. The machine itself will cost MS minimum 1000$ each (more likely up to 1500$) so they don't want to lose to much money on it.

[GFLPraxis]

The price is going to be higher than we normally would expect for consoles, more than probably in the 600 to 1000$ range depending on the PS3 and model. The machine itself will cost MS minimum 1000$ each (more likely up to 1500$) so they don't want to lose to much money on it.

How can you say that? This thing is using stripped down G5's and a next gen graphics card (a $200 next gen graphics card should give performance like $500 current gen, throw in bulk discount...), I doubt it will cost $1000. People are taking Microsoft's hype at face value.

[dancefreak]

Right, but there could easily be two versions as rumored, one with the hard drive and one without. Thats why we need pricing. There could be one at $299 without and one at $399 with, and thats why it is listed.

The hard drive is essential to microsoft's online plan. THe rumors of a version w/ no hard drive likely began with leaks that the drive was removable. I highly doubt there will ever be a version sold that does not include a hard drive. I'm sure we'll eventually see versions with different sized drives, especially after more of the media center functionality becomes utilized...but for the first cycle, and with a likely limited supply, there will probably be only the one version.

I could be wrong...I admit that, but I just don't see it happening any other way.

[dancefreak]

It certainly is true. Look at Microsoft's XBox web site. Silver offers free downloads, Gold is for online play. Silver will allow online play on the weekends though.

To quote:

Xbox Live: Xbox Live is where games and entertainment come alive, the only unified place where you can play with anyone, anytime, anywhere. And the best just got better. Connect your Xbox 360 to your broadband connection and get instant access to Xbox Live Silver. Express your digital identity through your Gamertag and gamer card, talk with others using voice chat, and access Xbox Live Marketplace—all right out of the box, at no extra cost. Upgrade to Xbox Live Gold and enter the exciting world of multiplayer online gaming. With intelligent matchmaking, access to all your achievements and statistics, video chat and video messaging, and an enormous selection of games, Xbox Live Gold delivers your competition, on your terms.

I already knew that...silver access to community/gold access to play--I read the same press releases you have and saw the 360 presentation at E3 on Thursday....but where does that say anything about Silver allowing online play on the weekend? That's the part I was disagreeing with you on.

I'm sure they'll have the occassional promotion to try to gain paid subscribers, no different then when HBO offers a free weekend on cable or sat. They'll have the ability to turn on or off access for sure, but aside from the potential for a special promotion, I haven't heard anything about free weekend gaming for silver members. From a business perspective, it wouldn't make much sense anyway...especially since this machine is being heavily marketed to an older audience that will likely do most of their online gaming on the weekend anyway. Plus what you posted still doesn't support what you're saying. I admit I could have missed something somewhere within all the pr surrounding E3, but so far I'm not convinced.

[dancefreak]

How can you say that? This thing is using stripped down G5's and a next gen graphics card (a $200 next gen graphics card should give performance like $500 current gen, throw in bulk discount...), I doubt it will cost $1000. People are taking Microsoft's hype at face value.

Microsoft will be losing a lot per machine. They still lose money with the xbox sold today.

That said, I would be surprised if it costs more than $299. Maybe it will be $349 at first and then drop when the PS3 comes out.

Sony is going to have a hard time selling the PS3 for less than $500--which will already be a big loss per machine. But anything over $500 will be a tough sell. It's going to be an interesting year.

[AidenShaw]

This thing is using stripped down G5's and a next gen graphics card (a $200 next gen graphics card should give performance like $500 current gen, throw in bulk discount...).

It is *not* using a PPC970 based system, it doesn't even have OOE!

It's a piece of custom silicon based on three PPC cores that owe more to embedded PPCs than even to the G3. Glue a mutant VMX engine to each core to handle the parallel computations often found in games.

Get someone else (TSMC) to build your silicon. Same thing with the graphics - it's not a general purpose card with 256MiB of high speed VRAM, it's a custom chip with 10 MiB of VRAM and shared memory.

There is no middleman - Microsoft owns the silicon, and pays the lowest bidder to build it.

[orangedv]

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere;

This is fairly detailed

Microsoft compares 360 specs with PS3 specs (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html?fromint=1)

What do you guys make of this?

Just to get you going, here is the opening salvo;

Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:
Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.
The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance
The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.
Memory System Bandwidth
The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3's by five times.

[Bonte]

How can you say that? This thing is using stripped down G5's and a next gen graphics card (a $200 next gen graphics card should give performance like $500 current gen, throw in bulk discount...), I doubt it will cost $1000. People are taking Microsoft's hype at face value.

Apple sells tons of computers but those G5 chips aren't getting cheap, nor will it be for MS. They plan on selling 3 mil boxes in the dec quarter but with a loss of about 500$/machine its going to take ages to get out of the red. Wait and see, it all depends on the PS3 price of course.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/19/goldman_sachs_on_xbox_360_pricing/)

i'm going to buy one and don't play games on it ;)

[savar]

How about the XBox 360 compiles the game on first launch of an old XBox title, instead of having the general consumer do the task of searching for and downloading a re-compiled game? Seems like an offal waste of time and money to have to send out the millions of copies of re-compiled games. Perhaps make it manditory to buy the HD in order to play backwards compatible games. It could be a patch of sorts.

I've always wondered why this kind of emulation isn't possible. Instead of translating instructions on the fly, why not translate an entire application or library all at once? Endianess is a problem, perhaps, but PPCs have been built with psuedo-little-endian modes.

Can somebody explain in more detail why it can't be done?

[daveL]

Apple sells tons of computers but those G5 chips aren't getting cheap, nor will it be for MS. They plan on selling 3 mil boxes in the dec quarter but with a loss of about 500$/machine its going to take ages to get out of the red. Wait and see, it all depends on the PS3 price of course.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/19/goldman_sachs_on_xbox_360_pricing/)

i'm going to buy one and don't play games on it ;)
So let's start a campaign to get as many people as possible to buy xbox 360 and bankrupt M$! :)

[AidenShaw]

I've always wondered why this kind of emulation isn't possible. Instead of translating instructions on the fly, why not translate an entire application or library all at once? Endianess is a problem, perhaps, but PPCs have been built with psuedo-little-endian modes.

Can somebody explain in more detail why it can't be done?

It has been done.

Digital built a subsystem called FX!32 for Windows NT on Alpha.

When you ran an Intel x86 application, it would emulate the application, and save a profile of what code paths you used. Upon exiting the x86 application, it would translate and optimize those codepaths into a native Alpha NT DLL. One could even call it a "re-compile", since the x86 code was converted to compiler intermediate language and run through the back-end of an optimizing compiler.

The next time you ran the app, FX!32 would run the native code section from the DLL rather than emulate. As you hit new code, it would emulate and profile those - and then optimize later.

Before too long, most of the code that you used had been converted to optimized native code.

See Digital's FX!32 is the key to running Win32 software on Alpha/Windows NT (http://www.byte.com/art/9610/sec12/art5.htm) or Yahoo! for "Alpha NT FX!32".

ps: And for the sharp guy a few back who talked about branching code, FX!32 optimized at the basic block level - preserving the semantics of spaghetti code.

pps: And for the rumours that one guy says "emulate" and another guy says "re-compile" - if Microsoft is using something like FX!32 *both* rumours would be true! Since FX!32 is already built to emulate and translate Win32 (NT/2K/XP/2K3) code, all you need is to replace the Alpha compiler backend with a PPC compiler backend and you'd be all set. (And the hard drive could hold the optimized DLLs for the games that you've run.)

[Jmac87]

I Like It

[nsjoker]

to those wondering if nintendo will let you download NES, SNES, and N64 games for free... the answer is no.

[Eric_Z]

@orangedv

# The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.

No it doesn't, it's got three PPE'esque core versus one for the Cell wich is != x3 the preformance, aspecially as things like mem bandwidth, cashe and latencies are different.

Not that it matters though, a gaming console isn't a general purpose device. If that was the case all the companies would have been using Athlons or similar. The preformance of a gameing consloe isn't awfully dependant on general purpose code, it is nice though to have powerfull SIMD units to do physic calculations and help keep the GPU fed. Something that the PS3 clearly outshines the Xbox360 at.

# The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.

We allmost don't know anything about the PS3 GPU, "we" here includes Microsoft.

There are some areas that they are obviously wrong in though. The GPU in the PS3 will do more shaders (50%) per clock and clocks 10% higher for example. Then there is the retardo bench with the Tflops, where the GPU in the PS3 outshines the one in the Xbox360.

Then there are other issues like 128bit coulour depth and programmabillity, wich we'll have to wait and see to find out which is best, wich has/hasn't got feature "x" and so on.


# The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3's by five times.

Link (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23173)

Scroll down to Vaan's post

[bishopdante]

Just imagine running VPC on a G5 twin 2.5GHz machine, and then compare the performance to a 733MHz P3. I suspect that the G5 might just kick it's little bottom. And the XBox 360 is even tougher in terms of power.

PS: Microsoft have a habit of making deliberately shoddy products for Apple. Eg: Word 98 takes about 3 or 4 minutes to create a new, blank document. On a 1.2 GHz twin processor G4. Suspect.

PPS: Did you know that Bill Gates at one time worked for Apple? The BASIC programming language played such a huge role in the success of the Apple II that Steve Jobs encouraged Bill Gates in 1982 to make a version of BASIC for the yet-to-be-released Macintosh. Gates was a little too anxious to release Microsoft BASIC in time for it to ship at the time of the introduction of the Mac, and therefore it was a really bad implementation. Don Denman was also creating a version of BASIC for Apple called MacBASIC which even in beta releases was much better than Microsoft's product. Gates knew their version was much better, so when it came time to renew Apple's license for Applesoft BASIC, Gates said he would only renew it if Apple killed the MacBASIC project. The Apple II could not live without Applesoft BASIC, and Apple could not live without the Apple II which was bringing in the majority of Apple's profits, so they killed the project. The Apple II became one of the most successful machines in computing history, and Microsoft BASIC was eventually discontinued in disgrace. Bill Gates later goes on to say that this was "one of the stupidest deals I have ever done".

You see! He's dodgy!

[swissmann]

The update to the rumor seems to squash the idea of good emulation. This is a bummer to me. I would really like to see Virtual PC be a lot faster than it is.

[bit density]

I've always wondered why this kind of emulation isn't possible. Instead of translating instructions on the fly, why not translate an entire application or library all at once? Endianess is a problem, perhaps, but PPCs have been built with psuedo-little-endian modes.

Can somebody explain in more detail why it can't be done?

Anything can be done. The question is, who pays for it? The fact is, there are very few games that NEED to be backwards compatible. Having the Xbox be on-line by default, and having a 20 Gig harddrive by default makes for a reasonably elegant solution of shipping with the most popular games by default on the hard drive, and the rest of the important ones to be transferred on demand.

The ones on the hard drive will make no-noticeable difference for the owner of the old game, the ones that have to be downloaded will be pretty small. The smallest part of a game is the code. New customers of old games will have disks that contain *both* the xbox, and xbox 360 version of the game, avoiding the download. The graphics, logic, and scripts live on the original disk.

The amount of effort to get emulation *right* in this case is a MUCH larger task than getting the few games that need to be working well, working well.

[bit density]

PS: Microsoft have a habit of making deliberately shoddy products for Apple. Eg: Word 98 takes about 3 or 4 minutes to create a new, blank document. On a 1.2 GHz twin processor G4. Suspect.


This was NOT an intentional making of shoddy product.

This is actually a kinda proof that emulation can suck in ways that you don't expect. Around the time of word 98 the popular concept that the major software houses were trying to do, was to create cross platform frameworks. So that you only had to write the code once. It turns out that this just makes bad code on all platforms, and has been the thorn in the Java's side from day one.

Microsoft abandoned cross-platform frameworks and now make code specifically for the Mac. And the Office suite is one of the largest and best coded products for the Mac often ahead of the Window's version. Love or Hate Microsoft.

[bit density]

Microsoft compares 360 specs with PS3 specs (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html?fromint=1)

What do you guys make of this?


It probably doesn't matter, unless they make something like a chess program for the platforms. (And I actually hope someone does...)


MOST games will be cross platform and will look and play exactly the same on each platform.


The question is going to be the "exclusives" and how important they are going to be.

Microsoft's major advantage appears to be Halo 2, the Doom3 engine, and the Direct X API.

It is flat out going to be easier for developers to create better exclusives for Microsoft than Sony out of the gate.

Sony developers will have a bit more difficult time, as they will either have to program to the PS2 (which they will do to start) with better graphics, or learn how to better utilize the machine, which they will but will not show up until second generation games.

This will come down to resource utilization, which comes down to potential Audience size and Market Share. The Doom 3 engine is ready to go for the platform for whoever wants to pony up the cash, and the engine is VERY sweet. The Halo 3 engine will probably be very nice as well and create competition between engine vendors...

Back to Chess.

The consoles are likely going to be *the* best pieces machinery available to chess program manufacturers. As they currently stand they will massively kick the ass out of any comparably priced PC and possibly any AVAILABLE PC. 1 Tflop and 2 Tflops are NOTHING to sneeze at.

If they do start creating chess monsters for the consoles, there *will* be a war of sorts, and I think that Sony will have to win here. And because Sony will have to win here, I think Sony will put some money into it. But at the same time, the best programs are written for the Windows, so we may find that the "unfundeds" may win the early rounds for the Xbox. I think this will be a fun war to watch...

[Mac-Xpert]

Microsoft abandoned cross-platform frameworks and now make code specifically for the Mac. And the Office suite is one of the largest and best coded products for the Mac often ahead of the Window's version. Love or Hate Microsoft.Haha, you where kidding right? :rolleyes:
If you run Word 98 or 2001 on OS 9 or even in Classic its Much faster than Word X. And the 2004 version is even worse!.

So much for great coding ;)

[bit density]

Haha, you where kidding right? :rolleyes:
If you run Word 98 or 2001 on OS 9 or even in Classic its Much faster than Word X. And the 2004 version is even worse!.

So much for great coding ;)

Hmmm... I do not have this problem at all with word. But you do know to turn off auto-word count which *is* a system hog, right?

Cheers

[ECLombardo]

What's going on? First I hear that microsoft's xbox won't be using intel chips, but using a powerpc instead, then I hear that apple is considering using intel chips (considering again, since this has been a rumor before).

Feels like we're living in an alternate universe. Could there be something deeper going on between microsoft and apple that I hadn't really taken notice of before (or maybe I have, only I've chosen not to pay attention to it??) It just seems to me that this criss-crossing of technology is a pretty strange thing, given that apple was always so proprietory before and kept their technology to themselves.

I don't give a rats ass about xbox. In the end, it's a gaming machine. What I am worried about, however, is how this may affect the mac later on. I'm a power user and a designer - my work relies heavily on my mac, I couldn't dream of using a pc. I hope that apple doesn't forget what it's about, and who their customer base is. I hope they don't lose sight of what's most important.

[Mac-Xpert]

Hmmm... I do not have this problem at all with word. But you do know to turn off auto-word count which *is* a system hog, right?

Cheers
Thanks for the tip, I didn't know that. It does seem some faster now, although I'm sure I never turned it off in 98 or 2001, apparently it doesn't affect the performance quite as bad in those versions.

P.s. Sorry for being off topic.

[orangedv]

What's going on? First I hear that microsoft's xbox won't be using intel chips, but using a powerpc instead, then I hear that apple is considering using intel chips (considering again, since this has been a rumor before).

Feels like we're living in an alternate universe. Could there be something deeper going on between microsoft and apple that I hadn't really taken notice of before (or maybe I have, only I've chosen not to pay attention to it??) It just seems to me that this criss-crossing of technology is a pretty strange thing, given that apple was always so proprietory before and kept their technology to themselves.

I don't give a rats ass about xbox. In the end, it's a gaming machine. What I am worried about, however, is how this may affect the mac later on. I'm a power user and a designer - my work relies heavily on my mac, I couldn't dream of using a pc. I hope that apple doesn't forget what it's about, and who their customer base is. I hope they don't lose sight of what's most important.

Well I think the xbox is very relavant now. The current xbox 360 is 2 very fast powermacs joined at the hip. This power will be in your living room for a few hundred, not multi thousands. It beggars the question; Will we see cheaper processing power delivered to Apple now?

[cubist]

The update to the rumor basically means that the backward compatibility requires recompilation - which basically means it's a lie. That stack of games in the corner, that you paid so much for, will not work on your new machine.

[AidenShaw]

The update to the rumor basically....

It's still a rumour, even if updated.

There's a lot of time between now and the release of the Xbox 360 for engineering plans to change.

Microsoft may have plans for emulation/automatic translation, but won't commit to them at this point in development due to too much risk in the schedule. The differing stories that are coming out could easily be due to people with different views of the development and marketing processes.

Come November, we'll know the true story.... 'til then, hold off on calling people "liars"!

Remember when the "makeup mirror" iMac was introduced, and Apple explained why nobody would want the computer behind the flat panel display ("the CD won't work vertically", or some such nonsense)?

[bit density]

The update to the rumor basically means that the backward compatibility requires recompilation - which basically means it's a lie. That stack of games in the corner, that you paid so much for, will not work on your new machine.

???!?!
Ok, when I put in my faithful xbox game, and it "works" on the new machine (but lets say the binary shipped on the harddrive), does that count? Surely the picture your painting, the useless games in the corner, is the lie.

The fact is, that most of the important games, which will matter to most of the customers, will in fact "work".

The ones that won't will be the ones whose market share was too small (cuz the game sucked, usually), or had some custom hardware associated with it. And for those, there will be the EXISTING xbox.

And shortly after the new xbox comes out, for NEW customers of good xbox games, when they go to the store to buy thier copy of the game, it will have both binaries on it.

So chill dude, just because they are not doing in a way that you expect, or want, hardly makes it a lie, and more importantly hardly makes that stack of games worthless.

[Symtex]

???!?!
Ok, when I put in my faithful xbox game, and it "works" on the new machine (but lets say the binary shipped on the harddrive), does that count? Surely the picture your painting, the useless games in the corner, is the lie.

The fact is, that most of the important games, which will matter to most of the customers, will in fact "work".

The ones that won't will be the ones whose market share was too small (cuz the game sucked, usually), or had some custom hardware associated with it. And for those, there will be the EXISTING xbox.

And shortly after the new xbox comes out, for NEW customers of good xbox games, when they go to the store to buy thier copy of the game, it will have both binaries on it.

So chill dude, just because they are not doing in a way that you expect, or want, hardly makes it a lie, and more importantly hardly makes that stack of games worthless.


Will you stop already with the binairies. ITS NOT TRUE. Microsoft has officially stated that xbox game will NOT NEED TO BE RECOMPILE. period.

They have say "top xbox games" because they don't want to promise something they can't deliver : all xbox games. You can bet that game likes Forza Motorsport, Halo and Ninja Gaiden will work out of the box.