I don't have a 360 to test it on, but I've read multiple people who have said that the update fixed all the slowdown.

Goodness. And I just traded my Black game really because it doesn't work for the 360. I played just one level when it came out and haven't really touched it since then bec. of my disappointment with not being able to play it on widescreen/hd version. I should have looked at this thread first.

from majornelson.com:

Are there any programmers in here that actually know for sure how hard this project is? Every time I read a new article they try to make it out like a few people on the BC team died for this update and they hope we enjoy it. When in fact, MS said NUMEROUS times that they were doing very well and working toward 100% compatibility pre-launch.

Darn! Only 1/3 of mine Xbox games is backward Compatability

Still hope for!
Area 51
Armed & Dangerous
Breakdown
Coker: Live & Reloaded
Crimson Sea
Dead or Alive Ultimate
Doom 3
Doom 3: Resurrection (expansion pack)
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes
Hitman: Silent Assissin
Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders
Kingdom Under Fire 2: Heroes
Kung Fu Chaos
Mechassault 2
Men of Valor
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Otogi
Otogi 2
Panzer Dragoon Orta
PSO 1 & 2
Phantom Dust
Project Gotham Racing
Project Gotham Racing 2
Samurai Shodown 5
Shenmue 2
SNK vs Capcom: SVC Chaos
Voodoo Vince

Microsoft lied.

IMO, BC started out with the specific goal, "Since Halo 3 won't be ready for the 360 launch, we need to get Halo 2 running on the 360". So they developed an interpretative layer to support Halo 2 and discovered, "oh, it can play some other games too!" Some MS marketeer got wind of the news and took it way beyond that to, "Backward Compatibility".

It's this quote from the "Corporate VP of the XBox Product Group" that pisses me off. This quote is from the Q&A from the official Xbox.com Backwards Compatibility list:

Xbox.com: What criteria do you use in choosing which Xbox games will be backward compatible on Xbox 360? How far back into the Xbox game library are you going to go?

Todd: When we say Xbox library, we mean the entire Xbox library. This ranges all the way from our launch in 2001 up to games that haven't even shipped yet. As we've said before, we prioritized the top-selling titles and those games with a large Xbox Live following for launch, and we're going deeper into the portfolio every day.

I pretty much agree with the assessment that it was overblown and overhyped, but this Q&A is STILL available on the official forum and this guy doesn't sound like an XBox PR rep. I'm not sure how it's possible for them to spin "When we say Xbox library, we mean the entire Xbox library."

Here's a blog about the topic:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/artic...atibility.aspx

Yes, it is *incredibly* hard. Read the blog entry linked above for some details. Software emulation is very difficult to pull off with 100% accurate reproduction even under ideal circumstances. However, the circumstances facing the 360 are less than ideal. The hardware is very, very different between the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Moreover, it is pretty much unheard of for one console to acceptably emulate purely in software another console from the previous generation (the PS2/PS3 doesn't count, as its emulation is not done purely in software). Even though the Nintendo SNES is (obviously) very weak compared to the original Xbox (and two generations behind it), the Xbox cannot emulate many SNES games very well. All things considered, it is really quite amazing that BC works at all on the 360.

Also, please realize that the core of the best performing software emulators will generally be coded in assembly language, which is more efficient than higher level languages such as C/C++. Assembly is a bit of a lot art in the programming world and is VERY difficult. I will point you to this recent thread in the Tech Talk forum for a little taste.

I have to imagine the 360 emulator is no different. It probably has substantial portions written in assembly. Assembly language takes a lot of time and skill.

Not only the hardware differences but this "type" of emulation has never been attempted before. Emulating 480p, 5.1, multiplayer, Live, anamorphic and whatnot. I'm sure it is quite a nightmare.

Not even in the same ballpark as emulating a NES or SNES.

So then would it be fair to say they were lying when they said they wanted to emulate every game in the library back to 2001? I mean, they had to know how hard it would be (and I know NOTHING about any of this but it sounds like a real bitch).

I think that is definitely a fair assumption and a bait & switch tactic to get people on board the new system.

It's just a baffling strategy to me. First off, they couldn't produce enough consoles at launch to satisfy more than (my guess) 10% of interested buyers. So they then release a totally false bait-and-switch statement about becoming fully backwards compatible maybe 2 weeks after their launch? While they still couldn't satisfy even a fraction of the demand? Did they expect this to sell more 360s down the road? But then I think we would agree they knew they couldn't live up to every game becoming BC even years from launch. So they can't meet supply and release an impossible goal? There is still far more demand than supply even roughly 6 months after launch, and that interview saying they are doing well and working to become fully BC is still posted. This makes absolutely freaking zero sense to me. The kicker of all this is they didn't need BC to sell the system, the titles available now (especially Oblivion) sell the system and I bet few people would care if it wasn't BC with the possible exception of Halo 2. I think this whole BC mess is more ridiculous than the launch quantities.

I want Unreal Championship 2 BC

I just want my Midway Arcade Treasures discs to be BC. That would make me very happy since i gave up on smaller titles i wanted to go back and play like Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil.

BC was announced at E3 of last year, months before launch. Microsoft has never said all games are backwards compatible, only that that is their eventual goal -- neither did they give specific timetables.

Again, they are working on it, and working towards it. What happens is games will use a specific feature or effect, let's say "games with snow in them" -- then what happens is that all the games with snow in them, SSX3, SSX On Tour, etc. won't work until they figure out how to work with snow. Meanwhile, other problems were "games with ninjas" -- well, it was easy how to get games with ninjas to work. So now, we can play Ninja Gaiden, Samurai Warrior and... Kabuki Warriors.

Sure, no one really asked for Kabuki Warriors to work, but it got to be working because they figured out the ninja problem.

This is the reason BC is so difficult and it appears to be haphazard. Right now, MSoft is focusing on whatever gets them bang for their buck. We'll see how it continues.

Yeah. Ninjas are always a problem.

is this a joke?

hell, you never know. if this was gamefaqs i wouldn't even have asked, i would have known he was serious

Hey, please don't take that the wrong way, it just really struck me funny, thats all. I was not making fun of your question.

I think instead of Ninja or Snow he meant to use "particular instruction sets" and "nVidia specific shading algorithms"

As others have said, Microsoft is aiming for and would like to eventually achieve complete BC, but no time tables have been set. I don't believe they ever guaranteed it nor said it would happen soon, so I do not consider it to be bait and switch.

Also, keep in mind that the emulator is locked in such a way that it will only work with specific games. It is likely that IF Microsoft released an unlocked version, most games would work to some degree. For example, they might play really slowly, have no sound, or lock up at a certain point, etc. These are very common problems with software emulators for the PC--some games work great, some don't. People in the PC emulation world accept this. After all, emulators for a PC are generally free, so some level of imperfection is excusable (it has taken a long time for MAME to be as good as it is today).

By contrast, with the Xbox 360 or other consoles that officially support emulation (i.e. without a mod chip), people have paid good money and tend to expect a relatively bug- and hassle- free experience. They don't understand the technical difficulties posed by software emulation and don't care. Thus, the trick for Microsoft becomes perfecting and optimizing the emulation such that a game works to a degree that is actually playable all the way through without any showstoppers and is, thus, acceptable to its customers. Once they reach that point with a game (which requires extensive testing, in addition to the difficult programming), they release an update to the BC executable that is locked to allow playing only the well- supported and tested games.

from a general design standpoint either microsoft has some really messed up hardware, or they are screwing the BC because of marketing and to "sell the newest version" i'd put my money on the later. this is they way they work and in a way it is good it forces upgrade, but the computer market is different from the console market. now since they own all the code and the emu is just the code that was on the eprom in the 1st xbox but compiled to be on a RISC system i don't see any reason why all the games wouldn't work. since the emu would be programmed to run at the standard xbox speed and use the xbox 1 amount of memory etc bam all the games work. at the same time if the emu they are using isn't just the shell of the eprom off the first xbox and they're just recompiling the .xbe files to run native in RISC then i can see why it is taking longer. either way we are screwed and it isn't due to the hardware of software guys at microsoft it is due to their marketing and what they think the final say in how fast and soon things should be release. i've said it before and i'll say it once again yes pete you can suck my balls. just my 4.5 cents