http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8357/M...Compatibility/



blog http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pu...s/xbox360.html

quote:

"Now that it's been announced at E3, I can finally reveal that the Xbox 360
feature I work on is... Xbox backwards compatibility!


Yes, it's real. It's been fun to watch all the wild speculation over the
past year or so as to whether the Xbox 360 would or wouldn't be backwards
compatible. And reading all the crazy ideas people have about how hard or
easy it would be.

Xbox backwards compatibility is a unique project in so many ways, and I feel
very fortunate to get to work on it. I'm sure it will be the hardest
technical challenge of my career -- I can't imagine what could possibly top
it in terms of sheer technical difficulty. It's not just the difficulty of
emulating completely different processors and devices. It's also all the
arcane knowledge I've needed to acquire about kernel-level development,
advanced graphics processing, operating systems and computer architectures.
It's changed the way I think about software.

To me, the most appealing aspect of backwards compatibility is its "magical"
quality. Normally, once you understand how something magical works, it's
much less amazing. With Xbox backwards compatibility, the opposite is
true -- the more you understand what it needs to do, the more certain you
are that it's impossible, and consequently the more amazed you are to see it
in action.

For example, some people observe the CPU and GPU architectures are utterly
different between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox, and then speculate about the
difficulties those differences pose for emulation. Without really
understanding anything that's involved, they're already convinced that
backwards compatibility is a difficult task.

Others apply more knowledge and compare the situation to something familiar,
such as existing x86 emulators for PPC. For example, Virtual PC for Mac is
great for many tasks, but gaming isn't one of them. On my 1.25 GHz
Powerbook, VPC 7 emulates a 295 MHz PC. Even solitaire feels slow, let alone
anything graphically challenging. And the Xbox isn't just any x86 machine,
it's a computing powerhouse. Emulating it seems beyond today's technology.

Other people compare the Xbox 360 against the Xbox




When I look at these numbers, I think: Wow! The Xbox is already a very
powerful machine, and the Xbox 360 blows it away. The Xbox 360 will be
fantastic for high-definition gaming!


But emulation is a difficult challenge any time the emulator isn't several
orders of magnitude faster than what it's emulating. So a few people who
understand how emulators work look at these numbers, impressive as they are,
and conclude that Xbox backwards compatibility will not work. (And then when
they see backwards compatibility working, they realize the Xbox 360 is even
more impressive than they thought!)

Finallly, there are a very few people who understand both Xbox systems
inside and out to an expert level of detail that I'm not about to go into
here. They perform more sophisticated calculations using the Art of Software
Engineering, but ultimately reach the same conclusions as those not skilled
in the Art: Backwards compatibility is impossible. One such skeptic
interviewed me for my current job, and pointedly asked during the interview
how I planned to handle the project's certain future cancellation.

And yet, here it is. It's magic!

This is part of what makes working at Microsoft so much fun -- the
opportunity to work on magical projects and do the impossible. It's a lot of
hard work, of course, but the challenge makes it fun."

wow, I'm just wetting myself with anticipation


zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
--
Paul (And I'm, like, "yeah, whatever!")
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/

On Tue, 24 May 2005 01:22:36 GMT, Paul Heslop
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>
>
>wow, I'm just wetting myself with anticipation
>
>
>zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

But, but...it's all so MAGICAL!!!

cecil wrote:
> http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8357/M...Compatibility/
>
>
>
> blog http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pu...s/xbox360.html
>
> quote:
>
> "Now that it's been announced at E3, I can finally reveal that the Xbox 360
> feature I work on is... Xbox backwards compatibility!
>
>
> Yes, it's real. It's been fun to watch all the wild speculation over the
> past year or so as to whether the Xbox 360 would or wouldn't be backwards
> compatible. And reading all the crazy ideas people have about how hard or
> easy it would be.
>
> Xbox backwards compatibility is a unique project in so many ways, and I feel
> very fortunate to get to work on it. I'm sure it will be the hardest
> technical challenge of my career -- I can't imagine what could possibly top
> it in terms of sheer technical difficulty. It's not just the difficulty of
> emulating completely different processors and devices. It's also all the
> arcane knowledge I've needed to acquire about kernel-level development,
> advanced graphics processing, operating systems and computer architectures.
> It's changed the way I think about software.
>
> To me, the most appealing aspect of backwards compatibility is its "magical"
> quality. Normally, once you understand how something magical works, it's
> much less amazing. With Xbox backwards compatibility, the opposite is
> true -- the more you understand what it needs to do, the more certain you
> are that it's impossible, and consequently the more amazed you are to see it
> in action.
>
> For example, some people observe the CPU and GPU architectures are utterly
> different between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox, and then speculate about the
> difficulties those differences pose for emulation. Without really
> understanding anything that's involved, they're already convinced that
> backwards compatibility is a difficult task.
>
> Others apply more knowledge and compare the situation to something familiar,
> such as existing x86 emulators for PPC. For example, Virtual PC for Mac is
> great for many tasks, but gaming isn't one of them. On my 1.25 GHz
> Powerbook, VPC 7 emulates a 295 MHz PC. Even solitaire feels slow, let alone
> anything graphically challenging. And the Xbox isn't just any x86 machine,
> it's a computing powerhouse. Emulating it seems beyond today's technology.
>
> Other people compare the Xbox 360 against the Xbox
>
>
>
>
> When I look at these numbers, I think: Wow! The Xbox is already a very
> powerful machine, and the Xbox 360 blows it away. The Xbox 360 will be
> fantastic for high-definition gaming!
>
>
> But emulation is a difficult challenge any time the emulator isn't several
> orders of magnitude faster than what it's emulating. So a few people who
> understand how emulators work look at these numbers, impressive as they are,
> and conclude that Xbox backwards compatibility will not work. (And then when
> they see backwards compatibility working, they realize the Xbox 360 is even
> more impressive than they thought!)
>
> Finallly, there are a very few people who understand both Xbox systems
> inside and out to an expert level of detail that I'm not about to go into
> here. They perform more sophisticated calculations using the Art of Software
> Engineering, but ultimately reach the same conclusions as those not skilled
> in the Art: Backwards compatibility is impossible. One such skeptic
> interviewed me for my current job, and pointedly asked during the interview
> how I planned to handle the project's certain future cancellation.
>
> And yet, here it is. It's magic!
>
> This is part of what makes working at Microsoft so much fun -- the
> opportunity to work on magical projects and do the impossible. It's a lot of
> hard work, of course, but the challenge makes it fun."
>
>

Transmeta managed to do it with far less resources to throw at the
problem. Albeit a design for a LP system where consumption was more of a
target than speed, but you can upgrade your CPU instruction set with
ease. Considering it only has to perform as well as (or maybe a percent
or two better) on legacy games and the original Xbox wasn't exactly
sporting a speed-demon, I don't see any reason that those targets
couldn't be hit, at least on the CPU side of things.

Fisher wrote:
>
> On Tue, 24 May 2005 01:22:36 GMT, Paul Heslop
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >wow, I'm just wetting myself with anticipation
> >
> >
> >zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
>
> But, but...it's all so MAGICAL!!!

heh hehhhhhhhh

Thanks, I needed that.


--
Paul (And I'm, like, "yeah, whatever!")
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/

<cecil> wrote in message news:j9idnTqvbpo_4g_fRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
>
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8357/M...360-Backward-C
ompatibility/
>
>
>
> blog http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pu...s/xbox360.html
>
> quote:
>
> "Now that it's been announced at E3, I can finally reveal that the Xbox
360
> feature I work on is... Xbox backwards compatibility!
>
>
<snip>

I heard that the backward compatibility will be limited to <begin crazy,
dodgy, evasive M$ quote>"top-selling Xbox games."<end quote
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05...s_6124746.html >.

So.........once again, time will tell and speculation will make the world go
round.

In alt.games.video.xbox Dragoncarer <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> I heard that the backward compatibility will be limited to <begin crazy,
> dodgy, evasive M$ quote>"top-selling Xbox games."<end quote
> http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05...s_6124746.html >.

> So.........once again, time will tell and speculation will make the world go
> round.

Well, the article confirms that they are indeed doing software emulation.

Emulation is never 100% perfect for 100% of all games. It makes sense,
from a marketing point of view, to work on making the best selling titles
work first. This would include Halo and Halo2. It also turns out that
these are among the most demanding games in the Xbox library. So chances
are, if they can get Halo and Halo2 to work with the emulator, a large
number of other games will also work with little or no additional work.

How many and which titles will be compatible is something that can't be
answered yet.

"Doug Jacobs" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

> Well, the article confirms that they are indeed doing software emulation.
>
> Emulation is never 100% perfect for 100% of all games. It makes sense,
> from a marketing point of view, to work on making the best selling titles
> work first. This would include Halo and Halo2. It also turns out that
> these are among the most demanding games in the Xbox library. So chances
> are, if they can get Halo and Halo2 to work with the emulator, a large
> number of other games will also work with little or no additional work.
>
> How many and which titles will be compatible is something that can't be
> answered yet.


Yeah, and good for them for trying. But they're 6 months away from
launch...shouldn't they have at least got Halo to work by now? When they
"confirmed" backward compatibility, and also when they clarified what that
meant, they never once said that they have even one game working yet.
It's just like everything else so far. There's 4, maybe 5 months of dev
time left, and the software they showed looked terribly rough. They claimed
that's because it's running on incomplete kits--is the hardware even
finished yet? They need to start production pretty damn soon. They
supposedly gave away 10 actual X360 units _AT E3_ (Mountain Dew promo), but
I didn't see it happen.
It just looks like they're so not ready to launch this year. If they were
launching next Christmas, they'd be golden. But right now, it looks like
everything is going to be a cluster-**** rush job.
But you know what? They had a horrible pre-launch E3 for the Xbox 1, too...

"Leon Dexter" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:HlOke.5492$(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Doug Jacobs" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>> Well, the article confirms that they are indeed doing software emulation.
>>
>> Emulation is never 100% perfect for 100% of all games. It makes sense,
>> from a marketing point of view, to work on making the best selling titles
>> work first. This would include Halo and Halo2. It also turns out that
>> these are among the most demanding games in the Xbox library. So chances
>> are, if they can get Halo and Halo2 to work with the emulator, a large
>> number of other games will also work with little or no additional work.
>>
>> How many and which titles will be compatible is something that can't be
>> answered yet.
>
>
> Yeah, and good for them for trying. But they're 6 months away from
> launch...shouldn't they have at least got Halo to work by now? When they
> "confirmed" backward compatibility, and also when they clarified what that
> meant, they never once said that they have even one game working yet.
> It's just like everything else so far. There's 4, maybe 5 months of dev
> time left, and the software they showed looked terribly rough. They
> claimed
> that's because it's running on incomplete kits--is the hardware even
> finished yet? They need to start production pretty damn soon. They
> supposedly gave away 10 actual X360 units _AT E3_ (Mountain Dew promo),
> but
> I didn't see it happen.
> It just looks like they're so not ready to launch this year. If they were
> launching next Christmas, they'd be golden. But right now, it looks like
> everything is going to be a cluster-**** rush job.
> But you know what? They had a horrible pre-launch E3 for the Xbox 1,
> too...
>
>

Problem is, E3 is a major undertaking requiring tons of resources. And if
you're six months from launching your bread and butter, I'm sure they didn't
give it the attention it deserved. Granted, Microsoft should have the deep
pockets to hire enough hands, and ensure working hardware, but it is still
understandable.

In alt.games.video.xbox Leon Dexter <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Yeah, and good for them for trying. But they're 6 months away from
> launch...shouldn't they have at least got Halo to work by now? When they
> "confirmed" backward compatibility, and also when they clarified what that
> meant, they never once said that they have even one game working yet.

True. It's almost as if Microsoft was caught flatfooted about this whole
BC thing. I really hope that's not the case, because if it is, it shows a
severe - maybe fatal - lack of vision and understanding of the console market
on the part of Microsoft. Yet the article from Gamespot about one of the
emulator developers would hint that there's been some pretty good progress
in that area. Sure, they don't have Halo running at hardware speeds, but
I think it would have been pretty impressive to show 360 running Halo, at
all. I guess the problem there is that most people would see this as "360
sucks" without understanding the more challenging issues that come into
play when trying to emulate hardware in software.

> It's just like everything else so far. There's 4, maybe 5 months of dev
> time left, and the software they showed looked terribly rough. They claimed
> that's because it's running on incomplete kits--is the hardware even
> finished yet? They need to start production pretty damn soon. They
> supposedly gave away 10 actual X360 units _AT E3_ (Mountain Dew promo), but
> I didn't see it happen.
> It just looks like they're so not ready to launch this year. If they were
> launching next Christmas, they'd be golden. But right now, it looks like
> everything is going to be a cluster-**** rush job.
> But you know what? They had a horrible pre-launch E3 for the Xbox 1, too...

That's the thing I don't understand... Microsoft should have dominated E3
this year. They should have totally and literally PWn3D Sony and Nintendo.
As it stands, it seems to me that the PS3 was further along than the 360.
Microsoft even made things muddier for themselves by mumbling something
about a HD-DVD drive "upgrade" being made available later in the 360's
lifecycle. If that's true (and it doesn't seem to have been made
official) then why buy a 360 at launch at all? Why not just wait for the
"deluxe" version to come out a year later, and take advantage of a lower
price, better hardware, and cheaper games?

Microsoft is going to have a one year jump on Sony this time. And so far,
they're not making very good use of it, in my opinion... People may point
to the fact that the Dreamcast also had a 1 year jump on the PS2.
However, I think 360 is in a better position than Dreamcast was, since
Xbox was a fairly strong console (compared to Sega's previous consoles)
and so should be able to hold its own against the Sony hype
machine...assumming Microsoft can deliver. They have to hit hard and
fast. Darnit, I *want* the decision between PS3 and 360 to be a tough one
for consumers. (I'll just get both, but you get the idea

This is a make or break generation for Microsoft. If 360 doesn't do better
than Xbox, I doubt we'll see another console from them.