Genesis was backwards compatible with Master System games (with add-on)

Curiously, these titles that were on the initial list are no longer there:

* Blinx® 2: Masters of Time & Space

* FIFA World Cup 2002

* Grabbed by the Ghoulies™

* Legends of Wrestling™

* Rugby 2005

* Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon™ 2

Never say never.....I'm sure it'll work, they just have to develop some code. People are so adament about bashing the list. It was much better when they said Halo and Halo2 will be BC. People bitch more with a bigger list....funnny

People have a right to bitch when the competition well offer full backwards compatibility to this gen, and even PS1 support on the PS3 and the downloadable N64/SNES/NES games.

MS dropped the ball here for anyone that cares about BC. It's better than just Halo, but still sucks balls compared to the forthcoming competition.

The 360 will eventually be fully backward compatible. This is just the STARTING list of backward compatible games. Microsoft has said they are still working on the rest of the games. I would say by this time next year, most if not all Xbox games will be 360 compatible.

No, it will not. MS will not invest the time and effort supporting low volume games. This is a fact.

Pass me the crystal ball jeff, I want to see tomorrow's lottery numbers How is that a fact, do you have a link?

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/back...tibilityqa.htm

"Xbox.com: By what date do you plan to have all original Xbox games backward compatible?

Todd: We're continuing to work hard to certify as many original Xbox games to work on Xbox 360 as possible; we'll be adding to the list regularly.

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."

No link, just common economic sense. Would you engadge in a practice that adds little to no value to your personal worth?

Of course Microsoft is going to say that they will support all games, they wouldn't say otherwise. If they did they would lose all those people that might not buy if there was a chance their games may not be playable. Marketing 101.

All I am saying is this, there are many titles that are not worth it to anyone if they bother to support it. Titles that no one really cares about. (Old sport titles? Craptacular games?) Eventually MS will pull "porting" these games to prevent throwing further money away. They are sticking to the "every game" mantra for marketing reasons only. Look me up in 5 years, I'll give you $1000 if the 360 is capable of playing every xbox title as a result of MS's direct efforts.

My crystal ball is economic theory combined with past history. It has worked well so far, but is not a certianty, nor is Microsofts's word, especially from a person who doesn't make the decisions.

If MS intended to eventually make all XBox games compatible with the 360, they'd be crowing about it at the top of their lungs. The fact that they're vague on the matter at the very least suggests that they're not sure if they'd be able to deliver on such a promise.

My guess is that they've got a general emulator that handles 90% of the code just fine, but that compatibility and performance issues with 10% of the code require hand tuning and recompiling. That would explain the 5MB patch file required for each game. The problem is that making each game compatible in this fashion is labor intensive and the difficulty will vary from game to game.

I further suspect that aside from a handful of top priority games like Halo, that MS wanted as many games on the BC list as possible at launch so they mainly worked on those games that were the easiest to "port." That is, they've picked the low hanging fruit and as they continue to work on adding games, it'll only get harder and harder.

Add to that the fact that as time passes, their incentive to add to the list only goes down. So my guess would be that MS isn't going to get to 100%. Being the cynical sort, I tend to believe that the number of titles they add to that list will drop off precipitously a few months after launch.

Keep in mind why a lot of titles will work...because once they get one game working, they'll find the groundwork they laid makes other games work too. Why do you think there are all those low volume crap games on the list already?

While they might not get to 100%, I have little doubt they'll cover a large portion of the library. They'll hit all the titles that people are calling for, and along the way you'll get a bunch of others by default (as has happened already).

Granted, I don't own an Xbox so I'm not too concerned if this or that game doesn't work. For a newbie like me, 200 plus games sounds great.

Nicely said Belboz...

I already addressed your question earlier in the thread. However every game will require some tweaking, thats why all games require a 5mb file.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

You guys are missing one thing though. In a year they'll be going head to head with PS3 and Revolution, both of which are going to be touting their "backwards compatibility". It would make a lot of sense for MS to be 100% backwards compatible by that time so they can nullify that advantage.

That is a very strong point. I kind of glazed over that, however I still think if they can convince people that "most" is enough... Besides, most people don't remember all the promises xbox LIVE was supposed to deliver that never came...

PS3 and Nintendo will be looking for weaknesses to exploit (since MS will be dropping their cost next year to be more competitive), that will be a glaring one that people will consider (like JoshHinkle) before buying. I think they are going to be busy as hell getting that list 99.9% compatible before year's end.

Also, if they don't do they are making a mistake. And what features does Xbox live not have that they said it would?

I don't think the 360 will ever be 100% backward-compatible, but I do think it will play at least 90% of the original Xbox games. The PS2 is not 100% compatible with PS1 games. There was a list somewhere of PS1 games that are not compatible with the PS2. The same thing will probably happen with the PS3; there will be some PS2 games it is not compatible with.

The only thing I've heard of was the web camera. I guess microsoft became aware that some people would do some nasty things with it.

So are there rumors of axeing the camera for the 360? I hope not because i want some eyetoy like games!

I don't know if it's axed completely, but there's no official release date as of now.

Bump for question.

Has anybody heard when the next round of backwards compatible titles will be announced? And will it be a round of games or single titles announced?

I guess I was naive when I thought they would have a few additional games added to the list by now. I'm not bitching about it, I was pretty impressed with the initial list. But this is driving me crazy for a lot of my Xbox games that I can't decide whether or not to trade in.

I'm beginning to think that they might as well not have bothered with this backwards compatibility thing. At this point, I have to keep my original Xbox, as most of my newer games (Battlefront 2, Xmen Legends 2, NCAA) won't work. And because there's no way to transfer files from one to the other, I have to start all of my old games over anyway. To me, the whole point of backward compatibility would be to be able to pick up and play my old games on a whim, and continue where I left off... I'm certainly not going to start every single game over again, even if it does work flawlessly (which isn't guaranteed, even if it's on the list).

I know, I know, they'll update the list and all... but the saved games thing is still a huge thing to me. Ironically, the Xbox Hard Drive turned out to be both a blessing and a curse...

I see your point about having to hold onto the old xbox... but I'm personally looking forward to the graphics improvements since I play on a front projection system.

Xhonzi

Exactly. How hard would it be to use the same memory cards? Really. The whole BC issue is a joke. Should have just left it at 0 games supported. No BC at all.