http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=4429

Rob Fahey 16:45 14/09/2004
Throw-away comment stokes the fires of speculation once more

The Xbox 2 rumour mill has turned over once again, after a Silicon Valley start-up boasted that a new piece of software emulation technology would allow the next-generation console to play original Xbox games.

QuickTransit, a piece of software originally developed by a computer science professor at Manchester University in the UK, allows the "transparent" emulation of software across different hardware platforms, its makers claim.

Revealing the software to the world, Transitive Corp demonstrated the system running Linux software (presumably compiled on different processor architecture) on Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh systems at performance which, the company says, is indistinguishable from native platform performance.

The comment that has sparked interest in the games industry, however, is a statement from Transitive CEO Bob Wiederhold, who said that the QuickTransit software will allow the next-generation Xbox to run software designed for the current console.

It's not clear whether this is meant to mean that Transitive is actually working with Microsoft on Xenon emulation technology, but a number of factors make this seem like an unlikely scenario.

For a start, the Wired article in which Wiederhold's claim appeared went on to say that Transitive has six customers, all of whom are as yet unnamed and all of whom are PC manufacturers, with no mention of any Microsoft relationship.

Besides, what works for a PC or server environment in terms of emulation isn't necessarily the same thing that will work for a console - which has limited memory, a key constraint on the QuickTransit system, which interprets recognised blocks of code by replacing them with functionally identical blocks for the native processor.

Regardless of how fast QuickTransit's code is, it will also still face major issues in translating the graphics functions of existing Xbox titles, which are written for an NVIDIA chip, into functions on Xbox 2, which will use an ATI chip - not just technical issues, but potentially legal issues as well.

Sources close to NVIDIA have previously hinted that they do not believe that Xbox 2 can play Xbox games without violating NVIDIA intellectual property rights, and that they may take legal action if the Xbox 2 does boast this functionality.

In face of this, it would appear much more likely that Wiederhold simply chose the Xbox and Xbox 2 scenario as an example of one problem which would be made easier to solve using the technology being marketed by his company.

However, the games industry at large is likely to keep a close eye on developments at Transitive in future - as any technology which allows new hardware to cheaply emulate older consoles and platforms would be welcomed by many companies in the market.


Chris

All this means is that emulation is possible, MS would more likely want to do their own in-house emulation so that games would look as good if not better on xbox 2 than they did on xbox. If they plan to do emulation, they're already working on it.

If the XBox 2 can't play original XBox games, I see a lot of people not buying it.

That was the great thing about the PS2. It could play all the original playstation games and even use the old memory cards to access save games.

Backwards compatability is one of the PS2's greatest strengths. It shouldn't be ignored.

I don't see how Nvidia could have legal grounds to sue MS in this case. They might have a part in the hardware of the console, but they have no control whatsoever over games. Technically, if the games work on the Xbox 2 without any type of hardware modification, we can assume that they would work on the Xbox as well.

Either way, not having backward compatibility would be shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm assuming that the Xbox works pretty much the same as a PC, and if thats the case games are probably programmed to use programming calls and functions that are specific to Nvidia's graphic implementation. While there's no doubt that anything from ATI would have the same capabilities, it would have to translate or modify any calls relating to Nvidia-specific hardware when the game calls upon it. That could lead to some dicey legal issues.

Backwards compatibility should not be underestimated. I remember when the PS2 was released and many people financed part of the purchase price by trading in their PS1s.

Granted you could still do that with the Xbox, but you would have to say bye to all your favorite games if there is no backwards compatibility.

Tough situation for MS to be in. They don't have the same control over the hardware that Sony does.

Emulation only works if the system can read the disc... The new DVD standard MS adopts, whatever it may be, will use a new type of laser.

The new drives are planned with backward compatability for movies, but that is largely a streaming process, the activity found in game loading may hinder this emulation from being a possablity as the data may not be capable of being read in the way the original game requires it to be.

Nintendo didn't make Gamecube backwards compatable and people bought plenty of those. PS1 wasn't backward compatable with anything and people bought tons of those. backward compatable is certainly a bonus and it certainly helps sales, but it's not essential.

I would rather have the hard drive than backwards compatibility.

Backwards compatibility is definitely a deal breaker for me next gen. I don't have much time for games and will definitely have a backlog of titles from this gen I still need to play when the next gen systems role out. Couple that with having no room for any more stuff in my entertainment center (and no room for a larger center in my apt.) and backwards compatibility is a must for me.

Not to mention that it saves money as I can sell/trade the old console in toward the new one.

Does Halo work on the Xbox2?

, there has been no word on backward compatibility.

Chris

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=4601

Virtual PC reports fuel further Xenon speculation

Rob Fahey 12:14 27/09/2004

PC emulation software being worked on by Xbox engineers, claim rumours

The question of Xbox 2 backward compatibility is open once again, courtesy of Internet reports that the Xbox technology team is working on graphics card emulation for the next version of Microsoft's Virtual PC software.

Virtual PC is a package which ships with the professional version of Microsoft Office for the Apple Macintosh range, and allows the Windows operating system and PC software to be run on Macintosh hardware.

According to a report from website AppleInsider, a future version of the software is due to provide advanced graphics card support for the first time - allowing owners of NVIDIA boards to emulate a 32Mb GeForce 3 in Virtual PC, while ATI owners will get emulation of a 32Mb first-generation Radeon part.

The relevance to the Xbox 2 comes because according to anonymous sources quoted by AppleInsider, the graphics card compatibility is being worked on by engineers from the Xbox team, rather than by the Virtual PC team itself.

This would suggest that the Xbox group has people working on the problem of graphics card emulation, and obvious parallels are drawn between the architecture of the current G5 processor based Macs and the forthcoming Xbox 2, which will also be based on a variant on the G5.

However, a number of logical flaws exist in this analysis - not least the fact that the VirtualPC software is expected to offer ATI emulation to ATI users, and NVIDIA emulation to NVIDIA users, while the Xbox 2 would need to emulate an NVIDIA board (as used in the original Xbox) on an ATI chipset (which will be used in Xenon).

While it does seem likely that Microsoft has engineers working on the thorny problem of Xbox emulation, senior sources at the firm have previously indicated that it isn't considered to be a priority for the Xbox 2 project.

In light of this, it seems plausible to suggest that any involvement in the VirtualPC project on the part of the Xbox engineering group is simply a case of the firm applying the graphics expertise of the Xbox team to another area of its operations.

That being said, this rumour is certainly more plausible than the last one we heard about Xbox backwards compatibility, which surfaced when a small Silicon Valley start-up claimed to have found a way to provide seamless cross-platform emulation (a "holy grail" of computer science) that would solve the problem of Xbox / Xenon compatibility.


Chris