Xbox360 backwards compatibility found lacking???

Archaea

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 19, 2004
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I've got the XBox360 - it's an amazing piece of hardware, I'm very happy with it, the actual relase first gen titles have amazing graphics when plugged into my HDTV projector and the title Kameo is espically refreshing and original AND most of all FUN!

I have a question however about the backwards compatibility???????
Mine seems to be a bit slow in some games.

Halo - better graphics, but it hitches, sorta like a memory load type hitch ever 30 seconds or so.

Fuzion Frenzy - downright SLOW, some of the levels that used to be so great are downright dumb slow...just seems like the emulator can't keep up the pace. Not dropped frames, but as in the whole level slows down to a crawl (slow motion type feel) and this was a very fast and furious game on the original xbox.

Crimson Skies - seemed normal

Dead or Alive 3 - the full motion video skips, but once your in a fight it plays perfectly. Also this game randomly locked up on me (the only time the xbox360 has locked up hard on me was in this emulator)

Ninja Gaiden - the load times seemed slower than on the original Xbox if that is possible, but the gameplay seemed fine once the loading screen went by.

Prince of Persia - seems fine

Is this mixed bag everyone's exp? Or did I get a sour unit on the emulation? I can't imagine that's the case because my actual 360 titles run smooth as silk and play flawlessly with the best graphics I've ever seen. I guess I was just hoping to get rid of the original xbox, but with the emulation being a bit "off" i don't know that I want to. I REALLY liked playing fuzion frenzy with my buds - it's a great party game, but it's pretty much unplayable on the xbox360 and seems to be the worst translation out of the titles I've tried.

Yes I know this is an "emulation" and I shouldn't expect perfection ---- Or shouldn't I?
 
I think you have a right to expect perfection. After all the PS2 emulation of PS1 games is pefect, except for a handful of BS titles that didn't conform to Sony's development specs. the PS2 actually had the PS1 CPU, it just used it as the I/O controller chip. Microsoft screwed the pooch on this one. Not only does it not support the entire library (or even close to it) it messes up on the games it does support.
 
Have you downloaded the latest BC updates over live yet? I know they've already released an update to what shipped with the console. Might be worth a shot if you haven't.
 
The update definately helps. I was having a bunch of problems with my games until I updated.
 
aren't the updates automatic? I've been connected to live and gotten a couple automatic updates to the bios.
 
besides the update that happened on day one of launch, has anybody else heard when more updates will be available? I'm curious...and I can't seem to find any info on the ol intarweb.
 
Kahnvex said:
besides the update that happened on day one of launch, has anybody else heard when more updates will be available? I'm curious...and I can't seem to find any info on the ol intarweb.
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Not sure, I think there was only the single update on launch day.
I know Fable skips here and there.. and you'll get some pretty weird sound glitches with it after you've been playing for awhile....
 
Filter said:
who really cares???


i dont.
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Anyone who had a library of Xbox games would care. Hell, one of the big reasons I jumped on the PS2, and one of the big reasons I will jump on the PS3, is that I will be able to play my PS1 games still. Actually, my PS2 can't play PS1 games anymore (it was a first day release system, and is on its last legs now) so that is a big reason why I want a PS3, I want to be able to play Parasite Eve and FFXIII again.
 
NulloModo said:
Anyone who had a library of Xbox games would care. Hell, one of the big reasons I jumped on the PS2, and one of the big reasons I will jump on the PS3, is that I will be able to play my PS1 games still. Actually, my PS2 can't play PS1 games anymore (it was a first day release system, and is on its last legs now) so that is a big reason why I want a PS3, I want to be able to play Parasite Eve and FFXIII again.
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This is why I have a backup PSOne xD
 
NulloModo said:
Anyone who had a library of Xbox games would care. Hell, one of the big reasons I jumped on the PS2, and one of the big reasons I will jump on the PS3, is that I will be able to play my PS1 games still. Actually, my PS2 can't play PS1 games anymore (it was a first day release system, and is on its last legs now) so that is a big reason why I want a PS3, I want to be able to play Parasite Eve and FFXIII again.
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this is why i have the orginal xbox for. i dont upgrade to play my old games.
 
Filter said:
this is why i have the orginal xbox for. i dont upgrade to play my old games.
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Ah, my TV is just starving for inputs, so I can't spare extra systems on it. A DVD player, PS2, Xbox360, Laserdisc Player, VCR, HD Cable Box, and leads for a camcorder tend to eat up lots of inputs. Plus, I gave my PS1 to my little sister when I bought the PS2.
 
BattleField2 = your not playing it on 360, Arrrrgggg. Love the game, I really need one of those switch things to go from 360,xbox, and ps2.
 
NulloModo said:
Anyone who had a library of Xbox games would care. Hell, one of the big reasons I jumped on the PS2, and one of the big reasons I will jump on the PS3, is that I will be able to play my PS1 games still. Actually, my PS2 can't play PS1 games anymore (it was a first day release system, and is on its last legs now) so that is a big reason why I want a PS3, I want to be able to play Parasite Eve and FFXIII again.
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Maybe its just me but when equipment fails on me I do not buy more of it.
 
Darakian said:
Maybe its just me but when equipment fails on me I do not buy more of it.
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Ummm neither does he, that's why he's waiting for the PS3 instead of buying another PS2 :rolleyes:
 
Anyone that's used an emulator for a console on their PC before knows that it isn't perfect.

Since the Xbox360 hardware doesn't have native Xbox support, so it has to emulate it. The X360 is brand-spankin new, and unlike anything (hardware wise) that coders are used to seeing. Programming the processor to translate the data from the Xbox game into code that the X360 can understand is very difficult. For example, look at the PlayStation 2 or Xbox emulators on PC. Coders knew that it would be a pain in the butt to not only MAKE them work, but to provide compatibility and smooth performance. That's why there's only one or two for each system out. None of them are particularly any good.

Now that's only half the problem. X360 uses entirely new hardware. There's a PowerPC 3-core, dual threaded processor in there, versus an Intel processor (derrived from the Pentium 3) which is single core, single threaded. To contrast the difficulty, they're exact opposites. If the X360 only understands English, the Xbox only speaks in some wierd bird language.

The graphics aren't as big an issue, since Xbox games don't use pixel or vertex shaders. Still, the CPU limitations spill over and affect the graphics processing significantly.


Personally, I'm surprised that they even GOT the damn thing working. Count your blessings people.

PS3 fans, I'm not sure if Sony goes the way of Microsoft and uses software emulation for backwards compatibility, they're probably going to have even more problems, what with that Cell processor and all.
 
They may just do that, from what I'm hearing (i.e. no PS1 support, but they said PS2 will) - this means that they'll either have the PS2's chipsets miniaturized, or use emulation. Luckily for Nintendo, the only systems they have to emulate are the easy ones, NES, SNES, and N64 - N64 being the most challenging. The Revolution will have a PPC970FX(Power G5 CPU) which is directly backward compatible with the Power G3 derivative in the Gamecube, and will have the out-of-order execution and great branch prediction that's making it so difficult for Microsoft to program half-decent emulation into the X360. With such an advanced, modern system (Xbox1) you can't expect it to be nearly perfect. The 3 cores, with their ass-backwards in-order programming, are going to have a tough time perfectly mimicking the functions of the X86 out-of-order instruction set, even with 3 cores. Give them time, they'll figure it out eventually.

Noobman, FYI. The PS3 has the EXACT same PPE (stripped powerPC) as the X360, but instead of 3 of them, it has only 1, with 7 even more-limited SPE's to take some tasks away from the main PPE. If they chose emulation, a tough time they will have. But I feel that with the rumoured price and size of the system, they'll just include the PS2's main chips, in a similar way they did for the PS1 on the PS2.
 
given that it is a single chip to give the PS2 backwards compatibility with the PS1, I think we'll see them throw that in on the PS3 as well. It wouldn't be hard to do.
 
noobman said:
Anyone that's used an emulator for a console on their PC before knows that it isn't perfect.

Since the Xbox360 hardware doesn't have native Xbox support, so it has to emulate it. The X360 is brand-spankin new, and unlike anything (hardware wise) that coders are used to seeing. Programming the processor to translate the data from the Xbox game into code that the X360 can understand is very difficult. For example, look at the PlayStation 2 or Xbox emulators on PC. Coders knew that it would be a pain in the butt to not only MAKE them work, but to provide compatibility and smooth performance. That's why there's only one or two for each system out. None of them are particularly any good.

Now that's only half the problem. X360 uses entirely new hardware. There's a PowerPC 3-core, dual threaded processor in there, versus an Intel processor (derrived from the Pentium 3) which is single core, single threaded. To contrast the difficulty, they're exact opposites. If the X360 only understands English, the Xbox only speaks in some wierd bird language.

The graphics aren't as big an issue, since Xbox games don't use pixel or vertex shaders. Still, the CPU limitations spill over and affect the graphics processing significantly.


Personally, I'm surprised that they even GOT the damn thing working. Count your blessings people.

PS3 fans, I'm not sure if Sony goes the way of Microsoft and uses software emulation for backwards compatibility, they're probably going to have even more problems, what with that Cell processor and all.
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Mate,

Xbox did/does use alot of vertex/pixel shaders (2 seconds in google found me this http://amo.net/NT/03-01-01XBOX.html)

Also, the problem with the CPUs isn't the speed/core ratio, its to do with how they actually work. the intel chip in the xbox is capable of out of order execution, little endian, etc etc, yet the powerpc based xbox360 has no out of order execution, is big engian based and so due to the completely different architectures, every single cpu register/call has to be remapped.

ugh.

hence, slowness, crapness and general lack of speed/stability

still, you are right, it is amazing it works at all. Kinda like how I am amazed Virtual PC runs at all on my Powerbook.
 
Halo2 looks 10 times better on 360 than xbox1. Huge difference from 480p 4:3 to 720p widescreen :)
 
I was greatly dissapointed in the lack of Splinter Cell and ESPN NFL 2k5 backwards compatability support. :(
 
The thing we all need to remember is that the backwards support came as more or less of an afterthought. Originally they had no plans for it, then later on they announced partial support.

I am happy to have a few titles that work, as someone said earlier the upconversion is nice.
I'm sure that the Splinter Cell and more popular EA titles will be emulated soon enough. At least, I HOPE they will. I love burnout 3 and I would love to play it in the upgraded resolution.

I'm happy to have any backwards support at all. If they had gone the route of Sony and put the original xbox chip in there, we would just have to pay more money, and this damn thing is pricey as it is. I hope that they release some sort of roadmap though, so that we can see the status of what they have coming down the pipe.

That said, it is weird to see the lack of triple A xbox titles on the launch compatibility list.
 
Kahnvex said:
The thing we all need to remember is that the backwards support came as more or less of an afterthought. Originally they had no plans for it, then later on they announced partial support.

I am happy to have a few titles that work, as someone said earlier the upconversion is nice.
I'm sure that the Splinter Cell and more popular EA titles will be emulated soon enough. At least, I HOPE they will. I love burnout 3 and I would love to play it in the upgraded resolution.

I'm happy to have any backwards support at all. If they had gone the route of Sony and put the original xbox chip in there, we would just have to pay more money, and this damn thing is pricey as it is. I hope that they release some sort of roadmap though, so that we can see the status of what they have coming down the pipe.

That said, it is weird to see the lack of triple A xbox titles on the launch compatibility list.
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Your right the backwards compatibility was tacked on at the last minute. That is cause it was stupid of them not to put it in they would be scrapping a library of games they established just so they could start over it would be a waste of money and good pr. I dont think they made very wise decisions when they chose the cpu to be that diffrent from what the old xbox had. Infact it was downright stupid from the get go they should have had it in mind to make the two systems compatible. And since the programmers have access to the base level programming of both the xbox and the 360 they should have been able to make a perfect emulator or had the chips in there to make it work right.

The diffrence between the emulators you find for the pc and what is in the xbox 360 is that for the pc a person who isnt one of the orginal programmers reverse engineered the system and made a program that worked now what they did is still guess work and it is what causes some of the incompatablity. The people who worked on the 360 had access to the base levels of all the programming every thing they should have needed to have been able to make a near perfect emulator for the xbox 1.
 
Or Microsoft could have done what Sony did with the PS2 and just tossed in the CPU from the original Xbox into the 360 as well, just for the backwards compatibility. I can't imagine 700Mhz PIIIs are very expensive to produce these days.
 
MS couldnt afford to put the original Xbox hardware in the 360. why you ask?

The reason MS dumped the Xbox so soon (almost 2 year shorter frontline lifespan than the PS2) is because they made a rookie mistake and signed a bad deal with Nvidia to make the GPU for the original Xbox. MS was paying huge royalties per machine while Nintendo and Sony had made more flexible deals with their suppliers that reduced royalties over time and allowed those systems to make a profit on the hardware alone. To put those same chips in the 360 would mean more royalties for Nvidia and would completely defeat the purpose of the 360 (to hit the "reset" button so to speak and get you to buy a system where MS dosent get borked on royalties). This is why they tried the emulation route...however ive heard that they cant fully emulate the old hardware without still infringing on some of Nvidia's intellectual property from the first deal so they are paying a smaller royalty in order to emulate the hardware.

also does anyone else think its a little convenient that old Xbox games that are similar to launch games (i.e. older maddens, project gotham 2, dead or alive) magically arent backwards compatible?
 
OK, that explanation makes sense then. Hmm, it was funny for me to think that Intel still had a fab somewhere cranking out PIIIs for Xboxes though..

Lakedaimon said:
also does anyone else think its a little convenient that old Xbox games that are similar to launch games (i.e. older maddens, project gotham 2, dead or alive) magically arent backwards compatible?
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As for this, it makes sense from a customer service POV too. You want people to have the more variety of games availible possible, so why port old games that are virtually identical to ones that you can buy new and native if you wanted.

Though, there are some really bizarre titles that they did port... NCAA 2003? WTF....
 
I can understand if porting an old game required a ton of code or was cost prohibitive. im speculating here, but im thinking that many of the games on the backwards compatibility list all work on a single build of the emulator. other games have to be specifically coded for because of their quirks. perhaps im being cynical or even paranoid but I think MS could have easily included most if not all of those mysteriously missing titles in their list without any/much extra work but chose not to instead. this kind of thinking leads to decisions on backwards compatibility being "political" rather than "technical". like MS decides oh <publisher x> is going to release their next game on ps3 first, so we wont include their old ones in our backwards compatibility scheme. In this case the customer loses every time and I dont like it.
 
The strangest thing to me is fuzion frenzy --- why even release it in it's current state? It's a microsoft title? Shouldn't it have been one of the more polished? As it is one of my favorite xbox titles, it's not cool that the emulation is soooo rough for it.

Since the game has so many "levels" based on timing, and the emulation is not smooth it's all but unplayable, the beat match levels where you have to time button presses are worthless and those were the best levels with multiple people at xbox parties.
 
Lunas said:
Your right the backwards compatibility was tacked on at the last minute. That is cause it was stupid of them not to put it in they would be scrapping a library of games they established just so they could start over it would be a waste of money and good pr. I dont think they made very wise decisions when they chose the cpu to be that diffrent from what the old xbox had. Infact it was downright stupid from the get go they should have had it in mind to make the two systems compatible. And since the programmers have access to the base level programming of both the xbox and the 360 they should have been able to make a perfect emulator or had the chips in there to make it work right.

The diffrence between the emulators you find for the pc and what is in the xbox 360 is that for the pc a person who isnt one of the orginal programmers reverse engineered the system and made a program that worked now what they did is still guess work and it is what causes some of the incompatablity. The people who worked on the 360 had access to the base levels of all the programming every thing they should have needed to have been able to make a near perfect emulator for the xbox 1.
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Right. There has only been ONE console in the entire history (not counting the 7600, that's too far back and before the crash) that has had backwards compatibility. Backwards compatability is something new that we've come to expect after the PS2, but you have to realize that the PS2 was an anomaly. They used the PS1 cpu to do all of the I/O operations, something it was capable of doing, and tapped it when they needed PS1 processing as well. For the Xbox, there is no easy way (or cost effective) to turn a PIII and an Nvidia graphics chip into an I/O processor, especially given that the endian of your main CPU just changed, as well as the rest of the archetecture. PS1->PS2 was still some form of RISC, IIRC, whereas this was X86 -> Power5, a complete change.

As for making wise decisions, they choose to make the most powerful system available, given the current parts and part prices available. They changed the cpu because the power5 is more powerful, and they were able to get the tri-core model.

Emulating is a lot harder than you think it is... when going from a little-endian to big-endian archetecture like that, every command, every piece of data has to be translated. It's not like it's just reading data, the entire command structure has to be reorganized. It doesn't matter how well you understand the original console, this is an EXTREMELY processor intensive task, not to mention translating the video commands, etc. Yeah, they could have made a perfect emulator. It would have run at 1fps. Making it playable, now that's hard. Give it time, they'll figure out more as they go.

NulloModo said:
Or Microsoft could have done what Sony did with the PS2 and just tossed in the CPU from the original Xbox into the 360 as well, just for the backwards compatibility. I can't imagine 700Mhz PIIIs are very expensive to produce these days.
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CPU, video card, I/O subprocessor, more PSU requirements...

Don't forget everything that would be required to power an X86 processor in a Power5 box.

Lakedaimon said:
I can understand if porting an old game required a ton of code or was cost prohibitive. im speculating here, but im thinking that many of the games on the backwards compatibility list all work on a single build of the emulator. other games have to be specifically coded for because of their quirks. perhaps im being cynical or even paranoid but I think MS could have easily included most if not all of those mysteriously missing titles in their list without any/much extra work but chose not to instead. this kind of thinking leads to decisions on backwards compatibility being "political" rather than "technical". like MS decides oh <publisher x> is going to release their next game on ps3 first, so we wont include their old ones in our backwards compatibility scheme. In this case the customer loses every time and I dont like it.
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You are correct. They have stated that many games worked on another game's emulator, preventing them from having to write a separate code for it. Most have to be coded specifically for. They've stated that they plan on releasing regular updates that improve the list of playable games, as soon as the emulators are done, but tehy weren't going to hold up the launch for that.
 
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