Microsoft Adds Backward Compatibility to Xbox One

[Erttheking]

You know the fact that they're pulling this out of nowhere makes me question how well it's going to run.

Still I guess it's nice.

Wish Sony would do something like this.

EDIT: *Looks at the list of supported games*

PFTTHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh that is a joke!

 

[Steve the Pocket]

So when are they going to patch in native support for games for the original Xbox, something they could have done from the start if they'd wanted to? I get that skipping a generation could be confusing and virtually nobody wants to play those games anymore, not to mention the issue of remapping Black and White to the bumpers or something, but still...

 

[Unpopular Opinions]

"up to 100 Xbox 360 games"

OH how generis!

only something like 1000 more games to go.

The developers have to say yes to their games. otherwise, it won't be Microsoft's fault.

I've already started downloading some of my games. Mass Effect, both Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie and Viva Pinata.

 

[Denamic]

That being said, when you insert an Xbox 360 disc your console will start downloading the game - free of charge.

Which is to say it's not actually backwards compatible. It just downloads a haphazardly ported version of the game you insert. Not to say that's bad; I'd just prefer them not calling the feature something it's not.

 

[RikuoAmero]

Can someone explain to me please just how this works? I understand that with backwards compatibility, there's two ways of doing it - you either do software emulation (where everything is being run on the CPU) or you stuff the console with last gen hardware (like the launch PS3s did by including the Emotion Engine chips from the PS2). We know the Xbone doesn't have 360 hardware, so we can take that off the table.
So how does it work? I always thought that for emulation, you needed your CPU to be significantly faster than the machine you're emulating. However, this isn't the case. The 360 is a PowerPC tri-core clocked at 3.2GHz. The Xbone is an octa-core x86 clocked at 1.75GHz. I know that in computing you don't add the speed of multiple cores and say that the sum is your speed (you don't multiply 1.75 x 8 and say your machine is running at 14GHz). How do slower cores emulate faster ones? I don't think that the 360 games have been ported - Microsoft says that they've built a virtual 360, so this sounds to me like what happens when I run Ubuntu in VirtualBox. Since console games are optimised for their hardware, how do Microsoft plan to make a game that was programmed to run at 3.2GHz run on a machine with half the clock speed?

 

[Poetic Nova]

"up to 100 Xbox 360 games"

OH how generis!

only something like 1000 more games to go.

I was afraid it would end up like this. The bc on the 360 was already spotty at best since games either didn't run or had emulation problems. Guess we'll gett the same shenanigans here.

 

[Frezzato]

Can someone explain to me please just how this works? [...]

I'm pretty sure they're just remaking the games to work on Xbox One. Who knows just how much work is involved with that. I had pointed out earlier that the vast majority of the titles which will be "backwards compatible" were either made by Microsoft, published by Microsoft, or acquired by Microsoft (Rare). So they should have access to the source code or at the very least be very familiar with it.

What troubles me is that this seems like WAY more work than the promised 360 BC with original Xbox titles. Obviously I don't really know, but I bet something like 99% of the converted titles will be Microsoft properties.

And I'm still hoping for Crackdown and Alan Wake Although, that still wouldn't be enough to get me to buy a One.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I'm pretty sure they're just remaking the games to work on Xbox One. Who knows just how much work is involved with that. I had pointed out earlier that the vast majority of the titles which will be "backwards compatible" were either made by Microsoft, published by Microsoft, or acquired by Microsoft (Rare). So they should have access to the source code or at the very least be very familiar with it.

What troubles me is that this seems like WAY more work than the promised 360 BC with original Xbox titles. Obviously I don't really know, but I bet something like 99% of the converted titles will be Microsoft properties.

And I'm still hoping for Crackdown and Alan Wake Although, that still wouldn't be enough to get me to buy a One.

What only one person has brought up in this thread is that the announcement of backwards compatibility specifically mentioned that developers need only to tell Microsoft that they want their 360 games on the One, and it'll happen. No effort whatsoever on the part of developers. So unless Microsoft plans on shouldering the full burden of remaking every title for which they're given the green light, then something has been changed deeper in the One's structure to facilitate the cross-compatibility of every 360 game ever made.

In other words, Microsoft shouldn't need the source code of any game that they don't already own. Furthermore, it sounds like they've already done all the of they work that they need to do on this feature for now. They'll probably encounter bugs when it rolls out live, but they won't have to start from scratch.

As for the current list of games being only titles that Microsoft had a hand in, it's safe to say that Microsoft doesn't need Microsoft's permission to allow their games' backwards compatibility.

----------------------

Still, I DO wish they would allow compatibility to work right off the discs. So many good games will never be part of the program due to licensing issues that currently disallow the sale of digital copies on the systems for which the games were made.

I'm looking at you, Deadpool Activision...

 

[Frezzato]

Spoiler

What only one person has brought up in this thread is that the announcement of backwards compatibility specifically mentioned that developers need only to tell Microsoft that they want their 360 games on the One, and it'll happen. No effort whatsoever on the part of developers. So unless Microsoft plans on shouldering the full burden of remaking every title for which they're given the green light, then something has been changed deeper in the One's structure to facilitate the cross-compatibility of every 360 game ever made.

In other words, Microsoft shouldn't need the source code of any game that they don't already own. Furthermore, it sounds like they've already done all the of they work that they need to do on this feature for now. They'll probably encounter bugs when it rolls out live, but they won't have to start from scratch.

As for the current list of games being only titles that Microsoft had a hand in, it's safe to say that Microsoft doesn't need Microsoft's permission to allow their games' backwards compatibility.

----------------------

Still, I DO wish they would allow compatibility to work right off the discs. So many good games will never be part of the program due to licensing issues that currently disallow the sale of digital copies on the systems for which the games were made.

I'm looking at you, Deadpool Activision...

Oh yeah, I never assumed that devs would be doing the work. I assumed that Microsoft would be shouldering the burden, which is...surprising really. Perhaps the MS titles were done as proof of concept. I can't imagine that the process, whatever it is, could have been exactly fast for a title like Mass Effect. They've surely been planning this for a while now, probably in an effort to recover from their past flubs. I found a quote from one of the VPs:

"The idea is, if you're a developer and you want to get your Xbox 360 games on [Xbox One], you tell us you want them to be backwards compatible and then we get that going and we will have the games up and running," Mehdi explained to us.

Kotaku [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/06/how-xbox-ones-backwards-compatibility-will-work/] (Australia no less)

Also interesting, there's a voting page [http://xbox.uservoice.com/forums/298503-backwards-compatibility] to get titles converted for the One, although they make no promises.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Ooh, I see what you're getting at. Do you really think there was a fundamental change to the One's architecture to make 360 conversions possible? They don't mention anything about a difference in hardware, like launch versions for example.

Do you think this was something ingenious they figured out recently programming-wise or perhaps there was something in the hardware to make this possible all along?

 

[Alek The Great]

I've been trying this out for the past few hours and all of the supported games have been working great. I also just copied all my saves from my 360 to my cloud saves and could carry on from where I left off without a hitch.

I hope devs and publishers get on board and give the green light for more games as time goes on, but I'm happy to at least have some support for this. For those that are convinced that they were entitled to this from day one, it is not trivial work to get something like this to work. It doesn't make it any less disappointing when backwards compatibility is not available, but it's a perk, not a requirement.

 

[Alek The Great]

snip

Ooh, I see what you're getting at. Do you really think there was a fundamental change to the One's architecture to make 360 conversions possible? They don't mention anything about a difference in hardware, like launch versions for example.

Do you think this was something ingenious they figured out recently programming-wise or perhaps there was something in the hardware to make this possible all along?

Can't have been new hardware when I have the first version of the Xbone running 360 games at this very moment.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Ooh, I see what you're getting at. Do you really think there was a fundamental change to the One's architecture to make 360 conversions possible? They don't mention anything about a difference in hardware, like launch versions for example.

Do you think this was something ingenious they figured out recently programming-wise or perhaps there was something in the hardware to make this possible all along?

Can't have been new hardware when I have the first version of the Xbone running 360 games at this very moment.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thank you. Also, aren't some of those games listed digital downloads only, like Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2? Or Hexic HD? Were those ever released on disc? It would be pretty cool if MS just cross-referenced the games you bought for download and just offered you the Xbox One version.

Interestingly enough, within the past few hours, they added N+ and Zuma to the list.

 

[Alek The Great]

snip

Ooh, I see what you're getting at. Do you really think there was a fundamental change to the One's architecture to make 360 conversions possible? They don't mention anything about a difference in hardware, like launch versions for example.

Do you think this was something ingenious they figured out recently programming-wise or perhaps there was something in the hardware to make this possible all along?

Can't have been new hardware when I have the first version of the Xbone running 360 games at this very moment.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thank you. Also, aren't some of those games listed digital downloads only, like Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2? Or Hexic HD? Were those ever released on disc? It would be pretty cool if MS just cross-referenced the games you bought for download and just offered you the Xbox One version.

Interestingly enough, within the past few hours, they added N+ and Zuma to the list.

Yes, both digital and physical games are part of the backwards compatibility.

For digital releases, a whole bunch of the digital 360 games I have just showed up in my "Ready for Download" section on my Xbox One and I just selected which I wanted, no other steps necessary.

For physical copies, I just put the disc in and it installed them on the hard drive.

I only have a few gripes so far:

1. It's a bit slow to install even though my internet connection is quite fast. I imagine everyone in the beta is trying to download a bunch of their 360 games to try them out though.

2. 360 cloud saves is the only way to currently transfer a save file from the 360 to the One and some games like Super Meat Boy didn't support cloud saves on the 360 so there's no way to transfer them (thankfully all games on the Xbox One are now required to have cloud save support which is really convenient). There's also the small matter that the 360 had a limit on cloud save of 500 MB which is nothing seeing as just my Skyrim saves are double that. Cloud saves have been working fine for the games that are currently supported, but they need to expand the maximum storage on the 360 if they want backwards compatible saves to actually work or just get rid of the limit altogether like on the X1.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

"100 Xbox 360 games will be backwards compatible with Microsoft's Xbox One, with more to follow."
nobody noticed this is backwards

corrected:
the Xbone will be backwards compatible to 100 X360 games

or:
100 X360 games will be made comaptible with Xbone.

an earlier device cannot be backwards compatible to a later one.

 

[gorfias]

Meh. 360 BC was special: it launched with it. Halo 2 from the original Xbox looked great! Gave me something to play when I couldn't afford multiple $60 games. But now? 2 years into this gen.? There are $20 next gen games and Indie games are a thing.

Hey, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. My boy has a 360 still and a dozen games I wouldn't mine replaying. But I haven't finished Shadows of Mordor yet. Far Cry 4. Forza 5.

I suppose I wouldn't mind playing Halo Reach. My 360 died when I was 2/3 through it. Should be cheap now.

 

[Kameburger]

I sincerely hope Sony will follow this train. I never owned a 360 so this doesn't do much for me, but it's definitely points for them. but Sony kind of has their hearts set on these terrible streaming services. I don't think initially speaking Sony and Xbox both keep backwards compatibility off the table until the previous generation really starts to dip, because they need to recoup the cost of expenses for their still stocked inventory of last-gen consoles. I think Microsoft in the position it was in, needed to make sure they had a current gen platform or else by the time next gen comes around they will be completely screwed.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

They didn't have to give you ANYthing, like Sony. Why are people in this community so all-or-nothing? That's supposed to be MY schtick. ;__;

They actually do have to give me things, that's the point of being a consumer i pay for things they give me those things.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

So basically 'Free digital copy of all the games you own'... You know... like DVDs and Musiv have been doing for ages! (Well... Kinda with music. Amazon give you free MP3... otherwise you rip the CD.)

Just books to go... Kinda sometimes wish I had digital copies of my books. Going away is easier with just my Kindle!

 

[jklinders]

This might actually go a ways toward fixing some of the self harm Microsoft inflicted since it's X-bone announcement. I don't have anything bad to say about them doing this to be honest, it's the first sign of an attempt at a pro consumer stance I have seen from them in years.

My question is, why is this taking so long. the tech to this has been there for years. the main advantage consoles had classically over PC gaming was ease of use. but it is become a little more twitchy with each generation so my inclination would be to stick with the platform that has the best reverse compatibility. this and modding has long been PCs strong point. They should have worked faster rather than slower at ths.