CHUD.com Community › Forums › VIDEO GAMES & RPG › Video Games › The Xbox360 Backwards Compatibility Saga Continues...
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

The Xbox360 Backwards Compatibility Saga Continues...

post #1 of 10
6/15/05 at 12:15am
Thread Starter 
On again:

Quote:
Nvidia Licenses Xbox Tech. for Backwards Compatibility
To achieve backwards compatibility, Microsoft strikes deal.

by Patrick Klepek, 06/14/2005

Microsoft and Nvidia currently have a license agreement for Nvidia-related technologies for use in the Xbox 360, 1UP.com learned today, in order to achieve backwards compatibility with Xbox. The original Xbox was engineered with an Nvidia-developed GPU, whereas Xbox 360 utilizes a new ATI GPU, which has proven problematic in coming up with an easy solution for backwards compatibility.

Nvidia confirmed the existence of a licensing agreement for Nvidia-related technologies to 1UP.com, but would not enter into specifics. According to the agreement, Microsoft will make payments to Nvidia over several years. Unfortunately, Microsoft is keeping quiet on the subject. "We have no further announcements on backwards compatibility at this time," said an official Microsoft spokesperson.

Microsoft has been investigating the feasibility of backwards compatibility for around eight months now, said a source close to the project, and signed the deal with Nvidia about five months ago.

Last week, ATI European Developer Relations Manager Richard Huddy provided the first hint in an interview with Bit-Tech. "Emulating the CPU [of the original Xbox] isn't really a difficult task. They have three 3GHz cores, so emulating one 733MHz chip is pretty easy," he said. "The real bottlenecks in the emulation are GPU calls - calls made specifically by games to the Nvidia hardware in a certain way."

In order to overcome the problem of games calling upon chip specific features within the Nvidia hardware, Microsoft needed to emulate the Xbox's GPU. Without an official agreement with Nvidia, however, Microsoft would have to reverse engineer the technology, which would have been a "legal nightmare" for the company, said our source.

Stay tuned to 1UP.com for the latest on Microsoft's progress on incorporating backwards compatibility into their next-generation hardware.
From: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3141472
Reply
post #2 of 10
6/15/05 at 12:43am
Quote:
Microsoft has been investigating the feasibility of backwards compatibility for around eight months now, said a source close to the project, and signed the deal with Nvidia about five months ago.
You would think they would have um, "investigated the feasability" of backwards compatibility a little earlier in the process.
Reply
post #3 of 10
6/15/05 at 1:14am
Well, that explains a few things.
Reply
post #4 of 10
6/15/05 at 1:56am
Frankly, I couldn't care less about backwards compatibility. Everybody was all up in arms about the PS2 being able to run PS1 games, and once they got their PS2's, the old games collected dust. I know I never touched mine again. How many people really keep their old games forever anyway, especially now that every store that sells games takes trade-ins? I just don't see it being a big selling point.
Reply
post #5 of 10
6/15/05 at 2:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nigel St. Buggering
Frankly, I couldn't care less about backwards compatibility. Everybody was all up in arms about the PS2 being able to run PS1 games, and once they got their PS2's, the old games collected dust. I know I never touched mine again. How many people really keep their old games forever anyway, especially now that every store that sells games takes trade-ins? I just don't see it being a big selling point.
There are some games on my Xbox that I'm quite sure I'll return to at some point. Ninja Gaiden, KOTOR, and Prince of Persia: SoT for example. Now, backwards compatibility isn't a huge selling piont to me because I don't plan on getting rid of my Xbox when I upgrade to the 360--I just can't justify trading it in a getting 30-40 bucks (maybe less) for it when I spent $150 when I bought it. So if 360 not backwards compatible, I'll just keep the ol' Xbox out so I can be nostalgic if I so desire.
Reply
post #6 of 10
6/15/05 at 2:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Embrodak
There are some games on my Xbox that I'm quite sure I'll return to at some point. Ninja Gaiden, KOTOR, and Prince of Persia: SoT for example. Now, backwards compatibility isn't a huge selling piont to me because I don't plan on getting rid of my Xbox when I upgrade to the 360--I just can't justify trading it in a getting 30-40 bucks (maybe less) for it when I spent $150 when I bought it. So if 360 not backwards compatible, I'll just keep the ol' Xbox out so I can be nostalgic if I so desire.
That's a good point, too. It's not like Microsoft is going to send people over to confiscate your XBox just because you bought a 360.
Reply
post #7 of 10
6/15/05 at 2:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nigel St. Buggering
That's a good point, too. It's not like Microsoft is going to send people over to confiscate your XBox just because you bought a 360.
That would be great. You wake up to a knock at your door and its a bunch of lawyers saying, "Yea, we heard you bought a 360, thats great and all but we need the old one back now. You know we take a hit on consoles so we figured we would find a way to make some of it back by recycling old equipment. Its all on the receipt you got when you payed for the 360, you should really read those things."

Id have to agree though that its more of a marketing gimmick than something most people will get alot of use out of. I still have a giant stack of PS1 games and I think I only went as far as popping in FF7 and playing for about five minutes the week after I got my PS2 and they havent seen the light of day since. I just dont sell them back to ebgames(or eventually gamestop when/if the name change happens) because I know Ill get 50 bucks for 50 games and it just seems like a waste if their even a remote chance Ill play any of them again.
Reply
post #8 of 10
6/15/05 at 3:21am
The people dismissing backwards compatibility obviously don't understand the depraved depths of a good old-fashioned Halo 2 addiction. I'll give up my Xbox when Halo 3 comes out and not a day before.

And from a technology perspective, the jump from Xbox to Xbox 360 isn't nearly as dramatic as the jump from PS1 to PS2. (Compare the current Project Gotham with Project Gotham 360. Now compare Final Fantasy VII with Final Fantasy X.)

Besides, there are games on the Xbox right now that have far better graphics than some of the 360 launch titles, so it's not really a case of apples and oranges, where we're going to be forced to choose between ugly and beauty. More like apples and slightly-shinier apples.
Reply
post #9 of 10
6/16/05 at 2:55pm
Backwards compatibility is the kind of thing that few people actually use but a lot of people like to know is there...just in case they get a jones for a favorite game.
That some people don't care about backward compatibility is proof that few game designers...at least for console games...have much regard for replayability.
Reply
post #10 of 10
6/16/05 at 6:47pm
I don't own an XBox, and I've held off getting one because I knew the 360 would be out soon and It'd probably be backwards compatible. I figured why spend $150 if I could just buy the latest and greatest and play all those XBox games I missed out on. If it's not backwards compatible, I don't know if I'd buy a 360.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Video Games
CHUD.com Community › Forums › VIDEO GAMES & RPG › Video Games › The Xbox360 Backwards Compatibility Saga Continues...