There is a great article over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that says Microsoft will not release whether their new Xbox 360 console is backwards compatible with older Xbox games
“Even as Microsoft took the wraps off its new Xbox 360 video-game console last night, the company left a major question unanswered: Will the new Xbox play games made for the old?
The issue, known as backward compatibility, is a key one for game developers and console owners hoping to bring their existing libraries of games along with them to the next generation. One of the reasons commonly credited for the success of Sony’s dominant PlayStation 2 is its ability to play games that were originally made for its predecessor.
But as recently as last week, a Microsoft executive said the Redmond company hadn’t yet determined whether the new Xbox 360, set for release this year, would be backward compatible.”
Microsoft has basically unveiled complete specifications of their Xbox 360 last week, but as to why they will not answer this question baffles us. Our guess is that they are still finalizing the gaming system and trying to get backwards compatibility to work. Sony has unofficially said their new Playstation 3 (PS3) will be backwards compatible with the older PS2 games.
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Xbox 360 to be backwards compatible
It's a-Live
By Wil Harris: Wednesday 27 April 2005, 10:17
A QUESTIONNAIRE being taken online by Xbox Live users appears to give the final confirmation that Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible - at least, if you buy it with the optional hard drive.
The questionnaire deals with Xbox Live and says subscribers through the original Xbox will be able to play against gamers on Xbox 2 -- as long as they are playing a current generation Xbox game.
"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".
So XBox games will run on "XBox 2".
The hard drive comes in because the original Xbox had one and the games are written to use one.
INQUIRER reader, Epobirs suggests that the hard drive could be used to house an optimisation library of Xbox 360 native binaries to run the first-generation games, thus increasing performance.
This sounds like a pretty good idea to us, and one that has had some use previously, with FX!32 on the DEC Alpha, utilising translations of code it produced previously to optimise the next time an application ran.
It is unlikely that Xbox games running on the Xbox 360 will look any better, although it's possible that they could be anti-aliased using spare graphics power.
As for the old controllers, i doubt it. It doesnt look like it has wired ports for the old styles. It comes with wireless. I'm betting they have new connectors for the new controllers.
Garret, not sure what you mean by "is it a projector because of 360". 360 in my mind means a full revolution (360 degrees). Maybe that is what they are going for?
will it b able 2 have same controller
is it a projecter because "360"