Dear Microsoft, please don’t stop updating backwards compatibility! Sincerely, Matt
Matt posted in Xbox 360 on June 8th, 2006

In High School, I chose to buy an N64 over a Playstation. Super Mario 64 is what really sold it to me on the console. I HAD to have the hardware that would enable me to play such a wonderful game. Several of my friends had Playstations, and all they talked about was Final Fantasy VII. I was unhappy that I missed out on it, but luckily, they created a PC version of Final Fantasy VII and then later, VIII. I wasn’t too happy when I found out that Final Fantasy IX would not be getting a PC release. When Final Fantasy X was released, I bit the bullet and got a Playstation 2. This way I could play Final Fantasy X, as well as Final Fantasy IX and several other interesting Playstation exclusive games that I didn’t get a chance to play. Fast forward five years.

Peter Moore said in an interview with kikizo, that “Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that.” I find this statement confusing because to gamesindustry.biz Xbox PR manager Michael Wolf said, “Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360.” Also, on the official Xbox Backwards Compatibility FAQ, it says “Our goal remains to get every game to be backward compatible.” They certainly haven’t over delivered on that particular promise. Now Peter Moore elaborates that “It’s a very complicated thing… very complex work. I’m just stunned that we have hundreds of games that are backwards compatible” I’m well aware of the intricacies of emulating the original Xbox on something with a different architecture. I’m not sure how they are going about it, but I have a few ideas. Some games might be emulated traditionally meaning that the old Xbox executable is loaded into memory and the emulator runs translating Xbox instructions to Xbox 360 instructions on the fly. A second method is that they could convert the binary from Xbox x86 to Xbox 360 Power PC and send that to you over Xbox Live. The binary would basically be pre-emulated, so that all the instructions from the original Xbox would be converted to Xbox 360 native instructions. I have no idea how they’d handle emulating the pixel and vertex shaders since ATI has a different ISA than Nvidia. For first party games, which Microsoft has the source for, they could recompile. Any x86 assembly would have to be rewritten or emulated. The shaders might have to be modified also. Regardless of which method Microsoft uses or if it uses a combination of all three, that’s a lot of work to get the game to run, and the testing to verify that the game runs well is very difficult.

So, if it’s so difficult why should Microsoft do it? Well the main reason is to provide the consumers who missed out on the Xbox exclusive gems last generation an opportunity to play them. For example, my favorite Xbox exclusive games are Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jade Empire, Shenmue 2 and Sudeki. Jade Empire is the only one that is backwards compatible. There aren’t too many Xbox 360 games being released, so a person who only owns a PS2 and an Xbox 360 could be filling their time by enjoying the gaming bliss that Panzer Dragoon Orta offers, but instead, they’ll be stuck playing Barbie’s Horse Adventures. Okay, Barbie’s Horse Adventures is a very bad example that people use. The only reason that is backwards compatible and Panzer Dragoon Orta isn’t is because it doesn’t use the full power of the platform and is therefore easier to emulate. They can probably emulate Barbie’s Horse Adventures in real time with no modifications to their simplest software emulator. Honestly, I think it’s just rude and disrespectful when journalists get on Microsoft’s case complaining that Barbie’s Horse Adventures is backwards compatible and their favorite game isn’t. That just shows their ignorance in how technically complicated emulating a complicated system like the Xbox is, especially on something so radically different like an Xbox 360. I thought journalism was about research: hunting out the story and finding the truth. It seems some journalists like to echo the sentiments of the fanboys without trying to straighten them out. Microsoft was the underdog last generation in terms of market share, but there are many quality releases that are nothing to scoff at. Maybe the Xbox games by themselves weren’t enough for gamers to buy the system, but the Xbox back catalog combined with Gears of War and Ninety Nine Nights might be just like Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy IX was enough to sell me on the Playstation 2.

It’ll be interesting to see what Sony does because emulating the Playstation 2 in software will be difficult also, although it isn’t as advanced hardware as the Xbox. There have been rumors that they may ship the Playstation 2 chips in with the early Playstation 3s to ensure that they have every game backwards compatible from the get go. If they just use the old Playstation 2 hardware to emulate the game, they might not be able to provide upgrades, which is one of the best features of the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. In the QA with Todd Holmdahl, he states: “Every original Xbox game will be upscaled to 720p and 1080i, and will take advantage of Xbox 360’s anti-aliasing capabilities, delivering a picture that is clearer and crisper than anything available on Xbox.” That is pretty darn cool, and that’s nice that Microsoft wanted to provide a superior gaming experience on the 360. I was hoping for more of a graphical upgrade when I played my PSX games on PS2, but I didn’t get any because it was just running it on the old hardware. So, hopefully, Sony will follow Microsoft’s lead in that regard.
Sony has committed to provide full backwards compatibility whether they choose to include PS2 hardware or emulate it in software, and Wii will provide full GameCube compatibility since the hardware is so similar. So in order to stay competitive, it would seem like Microsoft should try to be completely backwards compatible. Also, if someone is buying a console for the first time and wants to play the hits of the previous generation, they can buy an Xbox 360 for $400 (the core system is a bad deal since you need a $40 memory card… Seems pretty steep for a measly 64 meg, but…) and a PS2 or Xbox for $130 (since the backwards compatibility list is pretty limited for 360). For $500, you can get a similar PS3 since both have 20 GB, both lack digital video out and 802.11b/g, but the PS3 will probably have full or close to it backwards compatbility.

As a sidenote, lacking Digital Video Out for both PS3 and Xbox 360 can be a problem if you want to use them as next gen video players since at some point, the movie studios might put ICTs on the discs, which would downsample digital video through component outputs to 540p instead of 1080p. For Playstation 3, this is a nonissue if you spend the extra $100 up front, but if you don’t, you may limit your Blu-ray selection. For Xbox 360 with the HD DVD add on, ICT may screw everyone unless Microsoft releases an HDMI or DVI video out, but the current Xbox 360 hardware may or may not be able to output digital video. There’s talk that movie studios might not do this until 2010, but I wouldn’t expect them to hold to it. You’d think that they wouldn’t do it at all since it’s been proven that HDCP is fundamentally flawed and easy to hack, but I don’t think the people at the movie studios really understand that.

But as I mentioned earlier, providing backwards compatibility doesn’t just allow Xbox converts to play the back catalog of games, but it can enhance the experience for previous Xbox owners. Yes, Xbox owners could sell their Xboxes if the full catalog were available, but that’s not the appeal for me. I’d much rather play games on the 360 than the regular Xbox because they have upgraded graphics, a better controller that’s also wireless, and potentially, they could release a version of the emulator that shares some of the unique features that Xbox 360 offers like the guide, custom soundtracks, friends notifications, etc. All in all, I think backwards compatibility is a really cool feature and I think Microsoft would be foolish to stop supporting more titles.