Someone explain the 360's backwards compatability to me

[Tygore]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/09

That strip has me thinking: why does each game require its own emulator? Couldn't there just be one, general XBox emulator that comes with the 360 hard drive? Why the mundane, Live-requiring individual download? And why Barbie Horse Adventures?

[vegeta1215]

For the full effect, you have to read the old comic strip too.

Old Strip:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/07/25

New Strip:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/09

[Warlock]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/09

That strip has me thinking: why does each game require its own emulator? Couldn't there just be one, general XBox emulator that comes with the 360 hard drive? Why the mundane, Live-requiring individual download? And why Barbie Horse Adventures?

No kidding. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. PS3 doesn't need this crap. It can play PS2 AND PSX games and enhance them (in much the same way the PS2 enhanced PSX games a bit). Now I know some of that is because of the system architecture, but like you said, why the hell do they have to emulate every Xbox game seperately? You're telling me they can't make one Xbox emulator?

[Kairyu]

Might be concerns about how easy it was to pirate stuff on the original.

Do you think any kind of external downloads/accessories will be needed for the REV (What's the official three letter abbreviation for Revolution?)?

[Warlock]

Possibly.

As for Revolution, I'd imagine the system will just have emulation software built in and you will download the roms to either your memory card, built in flash memory or with some luck, perhaps a hard drive :D

[MottZilla]

Sony started working on PS2 emulation/backwards compatability shortly after they started work on the PS3 as I remember. I think they realized how critical it was on PS2 for PSX.

About X360, I wasn't aware that each game needed a specific download, but I do know that late Xbox titles have the required emulation support already on the disc. Forinstance I believe Ninja Gaiden requires a download where as the later released Ninja Gaiden Black probably does not.

The reason game specific downloads may be required is because it ensures the game will function properly, and perhaps the actual game executable is rebuilt for X360. So perhaps unsupported games are from developers they couldn't get to make a X360 update.

[vegeta1215]

Of course Revolution will have emulation software to play NES, SNES, and N64 titles, but Gamecube games will probably run with no additional software since the Revolution hardware is so similar to the Gamecube hardware.

[Cloral]

I think its a speed issue. As we all know, emulation is slow, and I imagine a generic emulator would be slower than one built for a specific game. But it is confusing as we all heard there would be backwards compatability and then we find out that a bunch of games don't work and never will. Still, I was playing a friend's copy of Halo 2 on my 360 and it worked well, so I think I'm going to pick up a used copy at some point. And maybe Ninja Gaiden as well.

[MottZilla]

Ya Cloral, emulation is slow, even for the Xbox 360's 3ghz cpu cores, it probably couldn't emulate Xbox in a compatible interpreter way. That is why I lean torwards the idea that the emulation software is actually just the game recompiled and perhaps tweaked to make up for any hardware differences that may cause a problem. It also supports why they can't take any popular game and support it, as they simply don't have the rights or the source code to do it.

But it has the advantage of you knowing it's been tested and should work properly.