Xbox 360 backwards compatibility

Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:26:37 GMT

One of the hot questions about the Xbox 360 (or whatever Microsoft ends up calling the new Xbox) is will it be able to play games from the original Xbox. The new system is rumored to be really different from the old system (multiple PowerPC CPUs instead of one Intel CPU, ATI graphics instead of nVidia, no standard hard drive), and Microsoft has been unwilling to commit to any sort of compatibility between the two systems. Everyone believes that MS would like people to be able to play Xbox 1 games on the Xbox 360, but it’s not clear that they’ll be able to get the emulation software to work well enough.

A number of sources have mentioned a recent Xbox Live poll, suggesting that it’s the first clear evidence that the Xbox 360 will include Xbox compatibility. Here’s the text that everyone’s talking about:

Xbox Live is an online gaming service that works across both the current Xbox system and the future Xbox 2. You will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles. If you are playing an Xbox game on Live you will be able to compete against people playing that same game on Xbox 2.

I read this a bit differently–to me, it says that if you have a game that’s available natively for both the Xbox 1 and Xbox 2/360, then you’ll be able to compete online against users on either platform. This is similar to games that are available for both the PC and the Mac–some games allow mixed-platform network games, some don’t. Since we know that at least two Xbox 1 titles will be available natively on the Xbox 360 (Project Gotham Racing 2 and Halo 2), this is a perfectly reasonable statement for Microsoft to make.

I’m still hoping that they’ll be able to make the compatibility layer work well enough to ship, but I’m not holding my breath. I suspect that it works well enough with most games, but there are a handful that Just Don’t Work, and they’ll probably get less bad press over the lack of backwards compatibility then they would if they released a flaky emulation layer.

One interesting approach that they could take with this–if there are only a small number of broken games, they could pre-load the Xbox 360’s (optional, but required for Xbox 1 compatibility) hard drive with patches (or even complete replacements) for the games that don’t work. Or, they could make the emulator refuse to load the broken games, and then allow emulator updates via Xbox Live. This way, they could push the blame for broken games off to the games’ publishers–“I’m sorry that only Microsoft games work with the Xbox 360, go complain to your game’s vendor.”

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Comments

  1. JonR800 said 3 days later:

    I thought that the Xbox 360 did not have a hard drive? googles Yep, the hard drive will be an option.

  2. Scott Laird said 3 days later:

    Hence the word “optional” in close proximity to the phrase “hard drive” :-).

  3. Alejandro said 14 days later:

    Does the new games made for Xbox 360 will work with the old xbox?

  4. Alejandro said 14 days later:

    Does the new games made for Xbox 360 will work with the old xbox?

  5. Scott Laird said 14 days later:

    No one expects Xbox 360 games to be playable on the original Xbox, just like the Playstation 1 can’t play PS2 games.

  6. Jason R. said about 1 month later:

    can xbox360 play xbox1 games?

  7. hbowenred@bellsouth.net said 2 months later:

    So what are you saying will you be able to play xbox1 games on the xbox2.Also will you have to buy the hard drive.

  8. hbowenred@bellsouth.net said 2 months later:

    So what are you saying will you be able to play xbox1 games on the xbox2.Also will you have to buy the hard drive.

  9. Scott Laird said 2 months later:

    The 360 will be able to play some Xbox 1 games, *if* you buy the optional hard drive.

  10. mvp2405@gmail.com said 2 months later:

    Do you think that new games that are coming out for the original Xbox in the near future (ex: Madden NFL 06, Ghost Recon 2 Summit Strike [which both come out in early August], etc…) will be able to be played on the Xbox 360 which comes out in November? Cause if someone buys one of those games for the Xbox and then 3 months later the Xbox 360 comes out and you can’t play those games on it then whats the point of getting any of these games….

  11. Scott Laird said 2 months later:

    Most likely, most MS’s own games will include backwards compatibility, while games from other vendors will be hit-or-miss. I’d guess that games from late 2004 through mid 2005 will be most likely to be compatible; games later in 2005 will probably not have compatibility patches out in time, but may show up later in the 360’s lifecycle.

    This is a total guess, though.

  12. rachel said 5 months later:

    well i have been wanting a Xbox…but if the 360 plays old xbox games then im buying a 360 and not xbox one..either wau i want it haha.

  13. null said 7 months later:

    Can the xbox 360 play the old xbox 1 games on it?

  14. jodi said 8 months later:

    how do you play with four control when there are two plugs?

  15. Scott Laird said 8 months later:

    Wireless. The 360 supports up to 4 wireless controllers.

  16. dude said about 1 year later:

    so can the xbox 360 play xbox 1 games on it? like stubbs the zombie etc.

  17. Sherri said about 1 year later:

    Will XBox not Xbox 360 be able to play the new games coming out that specifically say XBox 360?

  18. Amanda said about 1 year later:

    Does anyone know if you can play xbox 360 games on the old xbox? If you do, please let me know. Thx.

  19. jord said about 1 year later:

    can you play xbox1 games on the xbox 360 if any1 noes please can you tell me thanks!

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