Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility Demystified

Robbie Bach got big cheers when he announced that Xbox 360 would play Xbox games, but it seems that there's more to it than that.

Microsoft's new Xbox 360 may be coming out by the end of the year, but that leaves gamers who have amassed an enviable Xbox game collection in a predicament.

Xbox 360 will have limited support for Xbox software at launch

Both consoles are on the large side, which means that keeping them together in your home entertainment system is impractical. Robbie Bach, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer, allayed the fears of the space-deprived by confirming backwards compatibility at the company's pre-E3 press conference last week - or did he?

"Many gamers have been asking us if they'll be able to play their favourite Xbox games on Xbox 360," Bach said at the conference. "Tonight, we are very pleased to announce that Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible with the top-selling Xbox games."

The key phrase there is "top-selling Xbox games".

Halo 2 will undoubtedly be supported right out the box

Since Xbox 360 uses a PowerPC-based architecture as opposed to Intel-based for Xbox, it's not a simple procedure for Microsoft to include backwards compatibility for Xbox games in its new console. The likely scenario is that Microsoft will use some sort of software emulation of Xbox in Xbox 360, thereby tricking games into working on a different processor flavour.

This is supported by a posting on the blog of Michael Brundage, a programmer at Microsoft who recently wrote about his involvement in the creation of an Xbox emulator for Xbox 360. But taming the Xbox is not going to be easy.

"Xbox backwards compatibility is a unique project in so many ways, and I feel very fortunate to get to work on it," wrote Brundage. "I'm sure it will be the hardest technical challenge of my career."

In the beginning, however, Brundage and his colleagues will not be able to fool all games. What this means for you, the gamer, is that Xbox 360, unlike PlayStation 3, will not be able to play the current generation of games right away.

Xbox 360 will come with software that allows the top-selling Xbox games from both Microsoft and other publishers to run on the console. But if your favourite game isn't on the list, you're out of luck - for now.

Microsoft has confirmed to Kikizo that it will eventually provide support for all Xbox games, which will likely be done through either downloads of emulation software or discs that will allow the software to be installed on the Xbox 360 hard drive.

So, if you're attached to your Xbox games, and your interests stray from the big-sellers, make sure you hang on to your Xbox for a while. You might need it for a while still.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games