So.... Microsoft say XBOX360 is backwards compatible?

[DR]

Does this mean they will ship it with a Virtual PC style enviroment on it - since you can not run x86 code on a PPC Chip - let alone a 3-core PPC chip configuration

We all know that VirtualPC can run on OSX on a G4/5 I guess with the 3GHz clocks we have on the 360 will be powerful enough to emulate a 750Mhz cut down P3....

Discuss.

[Rave]

Maybe they've sneakily hidden a Celeron-M in there.

[Steve]

If it does have some sort of x86 emulation environment on it, then I'm sure people will find ways of exploiting it to run random x86 software on it

[oralpain]

The core hardware seems more than powerful enough to emulate a 733Mhz P3/celeron and a Geforce 3 with no problems.

[directhex]

the core hardware could _NEVER_ emulate it.

they've said *some* games will be backward compatible.

there will be replacement xbox360 binaries on xbox live, which require the original xbox data discs

[arthurleung]

Chance to exploit the Xbox 360 as powerful servers?

Imagine a whole rack of Xbox 360s process data faster than a rack of high density dual opteron blades, at a fraction of the cost?

[oralpain]

the core hardware could _NEVER_ emulate it.

they've said *some* games will be backward compatible.

there will be replacement xbox360 binaries on xbox live, which require the original xbox data discs

I'm saying that they should write a software emulator that runs on XBox 360 and emulates the original Xbox. I know thye probably won't do this, but there is no reason they can't.

[BenW]

Just read on engadget that it might support PSP games and also play music from an ipod

[directhex]

I'm saying that they should write a software emulator that runs on XBox 360 and emulates the original Xbox. I know thye probably won't do this, but there is no reason they can't.

the reason they can't is that the xbox 360 isn't even close to powerful enough to emulate the original xbox

[mortalkombatman]

This whole XBOX 360 backwards compatability thing is hard for me to swallow, how are they going to techniquely pull it off? The origional XBOX used a Nvidia graphics core and the new 360 uses an ATi core......any thoughts?

[directhex]

This whole XBOX 360 backwards compatability thing is hard for me to swallow, how are they going to techniquely pull it off? The origional XBOX used a Nvidia graphics core and the new 360 uses an ATi core......any thoughts?

see earlier comments on recompilation

[SilentDeath]

the reason they can't is that the xbox 360 isn't even close to powerful enough to emulate the original xbox

Even if it was, recompiling would probably have better results/easyer than writing an emulator..?

What you say makes sense.. but how did you know?

Just read on engadget that it might support PSP games and also play music from an ipod

Supporting psp games would not get them sued?
Any reson it could not play music from an ipod? does ipod not use mp3/ogg/flac? (well not the last two.. but mp3?).. If so why would you want to? I suppose the chavs will...

[oralpain]

the reason they can't is that the xbox 360 isn't even close to powerful enough to emulate the original xbox

My neighbor's Athlon XP 1800+ with a ti4200 is fast enough to emulate an xbox.

I've tried the Cxbx emulator and it ran fine, though only Turok Evolution is playable currently (and doesn't have sound).

Even though an x86 processor like the athlon XP can run alot of the xbox 1 code natively and the cpu in the XBox 360 cannot, I have a hard time beliving that the XBox 360 CPU is too slow for a well written dynamic recompiler to match the final performance of a 733MHz P3. Unless, not having branch predictors (if the PPC core is similar to the one in the cell processor) totally kills dynamic recompliation. I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know for sure.

[directhex]

My neighbor's Athlon XP 1800+ with a ti4200 is fast enough to emulate an xbox.

I've tried the Cxbx emulator and it ran fine, though only Turok Evolution is playable currently (and doesn't have sound).

Even though an x86 processor like the athlon XP can run alot of the xbox 1 code natively and the cpu in the XBox 360 cannot, I have a hard time beliving that the XBox 360 CPU is too slow for a well written dynamic recompiler to match the final performance of a 733MHz P3. Unless, not having branch predictors (if the PPC core is similar to the one in the cell processor) totally kills dynamic recompliation. I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't know for sure.

dynamic recompilers are simply not an efficient or reliable solution.

look at something like n64 emulation, which is usually based on them - how few games work at 90% or so accuracy? how many orders of magnitude more are simply broken, wrong, etc etc etc?

microsoft cannot & will not claim partial backwards compatability and then have messy half-working games out - it'd kill their image. games support will be per-game, and in cases of per-game support, anything other than replacement binaries is dumb

also bear in mind no games console ever released has been able to emulate its predecessor - the game boy advance can't do it, the playstation 2 can't do it

[directhex]

also, bear in mind that the graphics is likely to be a bigger blocker than the cpu - from endianness issues up to slight differences in the way nvidia and ati kit renders things. given that xbox games are all written for a pretty cross-platform api, it'd be far easier to recompile (and fix the few games that need byte order and word length fixed) than to try & work on compiled code.