Microsoft considering adding emulated 360 backwards compatibility to Xbox One

Emulating one 360 game is the same as emulating any other 360 game. No matter if it is Braid or Halo 4.

if that where the case every original xbox game would have worked on the 360. they had to pick and chose their battles. getting halo 2 working may have made barbies horse adventure work, but not chronicles or riddick. i'm saying they should chose digital as their battle, becasue ultimately, it's more important.
 
"It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff. So there's nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself."
Tech-talk right there.

Stuff.
 
And how exactly would the XB1 send the controller inputs to the 360? Via the HDMI cable? I think you're missing a step here somewhere...

"add some intermediate processing for controller/device comms"

Devices like the CronusMAX, XIM etc. already let you use a cross-gen controller. You couldn't think of something incredibly generic as a backwards-compatible dongle solution for the Xbox One?

Both the Xbox One and 360 have methods for data transfer - how do you think they communicate with any device?

Besides what is the point in having backwards compatability where you still have to have a 360? At that point just plug the damn 360 into your TV (or the TV input on the XB1) and be done with it.

It would be nice to be able to launch an Xbox 360 game through the Xbox One, using just one menu system, being able to sign into a one live account, not have to worrying about managing two consoles through one HDMI connection.

The Xbox 360 becomes a dumb terminal, responsible only for launching titles.

It's a damn sight less complicated than emulation.

This post makes no sense at all...

Amazing.
 
Ha ha, so Internet is suddenly being considered as an issue for users now, but before they thought it was fine users to have Internet access 24/7? Ha ha.

Well judging from PS Now, seem that tech is possible now, but I would prefer local emulation, so if MS do that, really hope it pushes Sony to add the same.
 
if that where the case every original xbox game would have worked on the 360. they had to pick and chose their battles. getting halo 2 working may have made barbies horse adventure work, but not chronicles or riddick. i'm saying they should chose digital as their battle, becasue ultimately, it's more important.

He kind of has a point. Sort of.
With the OG Xbox, some developers were able to use certain nVidia specific calls which obviously didn't carry over to the Radeon based GPU. (That and MS had to pay nVidia the rights to emulate what they could)

With the 360, if a game went around DirectX calls, or basically coded to the metal, the game would not get certification.

MS were very strict about using their DirectX abstraction layer. So really, this is more about converting PPC calls for x86 to work with.
 
Can't see it happening personally.

No profit in this without doing things that would cause an outrage, emulation is often a shit approximation compared to playing the original software/hardware anyway.

I don't see the difficulty in people keeping their very cheap 360's to do exactly this functionality, any emulation solution MS were to monetise would have to be cheaper solution than just keeping our 360 anyway.

And even then you can guarantee it would be full of compromises, missing textures, lights showing through walls, missing multiplayer.

No thanks, spend the time and money on something important please, emulation is a shit sandwich, people just think they like how it tastes.
 
I'd prefer local emulation, but if they actually came up with a reliable solution, I would consider buying an Xbone for that.

Anyone tech-savvy willing to explain why is backwards compatibility such a problem for consoles? I honestly don't get why resort to cloud solutions instead of simply using the more powerful hardware to emulate the less powerful.
 
In my opinion, it's not going to happen as the architectures are so different and takes too much time to make it right with different approaches to coding efficiently by game developers. There's more money in reselling HD upressed versions of older games.

Cloud streaming will remain "a very bad feature" until MS gets their own version of it working, then it's a "must have cloud enabled power from zeus feature". Same shit Sony said about rumble when they didn't have it. What we don't have, we downplay. It's life.
 
Anyone tech-savvy willing to explain why is backwards compatibility such a problem for consoles? I honestly don't get why resort to cloud solutions instead of simply using the more powerful hardware to emulate the less powerful.

If previous emulators are taken as base, you need at least 10x as much CPU power for emulation.
X360 had a 3 core 3.2GHz CPU. XBone has an 8 core 1.7 GHz CPU. While the Hz speeds between different architectures don't really translate 1:1, XBone's CPU is still order of magnitudes too slow to even touch X360.
 
If previous emulators are taken as base, you need at least 10x as much CPU power for emulation.
X360 had a 3 core 3.2GHz CPU. XBone has an 8 core 1.7 GHz CPU. While the Hz speeds between different architectures don't really translate 1:1, XBone's CPU is still order of magnitudes too slow to even touch X360.

Thanks!
I always thought that PC emulators require monster CPUs because their developers basically reverse-engineer old consoles and that actual console makers could save up on power usage thanks to actually having all the knowledge about their architecture. Welp, there goes my optimistic bubble.
 
The headline is such non-news, LOL. Just consider the opposite:

"Microsoft never, ever, even for a little bit considered the possibility of setting up backwards compatibility for their new console"
 
I would much rather just have 1080p/60fps ports of classic Xbox and Xbox 360 games tbh.

Release Rare's entire back catalogue on Xbox One, and I'll buy the console ASAP.
 
Interesting, would like to see how MS plans to overcome the weak CPU in the Xbox One to make it possible to emulate 360 titles.
 
Article sounds like a lot of "possibly, perhaps, who knows" and Penello running his mouth again.
This.

This thread wasn't needed at all. Trying to make something out of nothing.
The article seems to implicate that they've at least tried. More importantly, it's also indicative of their current feelings towards cloud BC and perhaps cloud game streaming in general.

Also, what if the X1 gets a physical BC add-on? Not entirely impossible either, and people have shown interest for such a thing here too.
 
Interesting, would like to see how MS plans to overcome the weak CPU in the Xbox One to make it possible to emulate 360 titles.

They know how the 360 works, they don't need to reverse engineer everything like PC emus. It can be quickly optimised due to this and only a fraction of the power of a PC would be needed, just like every other official emulator system.
 
I could never get why people so desperately need backwards compatibility. I don't buy a new system to play old games.

But you'll need to keep your old system to play them. For those looking to save on purchases, it's often desirable to trade the old system in towards the new one. It's maybe not as important for consoles, but handhelds without BC is a deal breaker for me.
 
Is this the month when MS staff were told to just say "we're considering everything you want!!!" with little to no regard if its even feasible or actually on the agenda at all? The most free and expectation-less good PR around!

I still remember the fucking woeful Xbox 1 support on 360 that had certain regions of JSRF performing better than others. Nevermind if they'd put the work in they could have sold all Xbox 1 stuff like Phantom Dust on XBLA or whatever.
 
Thanks!
I always thought that PC emulators require monster CPUs because their developers basically reverse-engineer old consoles and that actual console makers could save up on power usage thanks to actually having all the knowledge about their architecture. Welp, there goes my optimistic bubble.

Your earlier impression was correct, hardware makers with in depth knowledge of a console's architecture and instruction set can make much more efficient emulators than outside amateurs. That of course doesn't make anything possible, but the xbox 360 on 2005 hardware emulates the original xbox better than the most advanced PC in the world in 2014.
 
They know how the 360 works, they don't need to reverse engineer everything like PC emus. It can be quickly optimised due to this and only a fraction of the power of a PC would be needed, just like every other official emulator system.
I'm aware of that. But you'll keep the translation layer and OS overhead. The CPU in the Xbox One is in terms of raw power on the same level as the 360 CPU so that doesn't help either. Hence why I'm interested to see how MS will tackle this problem.
 
Your earlier impression was correct, hardware makers with in depth knowledge of a console's architecture and instruction set can make much more efficient emulators than outside amateurs. That of course doesn't make anything possible, but the xbox 360 on 2005 hardware emulates the original xbox better than the most advanced PC in the world in 2014.

Most? All.
 
Your earlier impression was correct, hardware makers with in depth knowledge of a console's architecture and instruction set can make much more efficient emulators than outside amateurs. That of course doesn't make anything possible, but the xbox 360 on 2005 hardware emulates the original xbox better than the most advanced PC in the world in 2014.

Because there are no XBOX PC emulators?
Things like Kega Fusion, bSNES, Vice, WinUAE run circles around any 'official' emulator.
Sure, they require more CPU power to work, but not because they are inefficiently written - it's because they actually emulate the console, not just try to hack it so that few games work.
 
I wish PS4 could emulate dat Cell Processor so I could just have all my stuff on PS4 as well.

Still, this is pretty great news. I'd better go tell a friend of mine who's been torn over which system to choose for next-gen.
 
I wish PS4 could emulate dat Cell Processor so I could just have all my stuff on PS4 as well.

Still, this is pretty great news. I'd better go tell a friend of mine who's been torn over which system to choose for next-gen.

I wouldn't bother till its officially happening. ITs very VERY unlikely they will get 360 emulation working on the xbox one, the power just isn't there. There might be a PSNow like service, but like with that id doubt you could chuck in youro ld 360 disk's and play them.
 
Because there are no XBOX PC emulators?
Things like Kega Fusion, bSNES, Vice, WinUAE run circles around any 'official' emulator.
Sure, they require more CPU power to work, but not because they are inefficiently written - it's because they actually emulate the console, not just try to hack it so that few games work.

Why are there no Xbox PC emulators? Because it is difficult to do so without documentation of the Xbox's hardware, something people who have worked on making one have commented on. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make by pointing to emulators of ancient hardware, it's kind of a tangent. Besides which, Nintendo makes pretty good emulators for their own hardware on virtual console. Sony's PS2 emulation on the PS3 is also ahead of what PC emulation is capable of on similar hardware specs.
 
As most have said, this is relatively unlikely as the Xbox One simply isn't powerful enough for full blown emulation of the 360. That being said, I wonder if they will do something like have it available for select, popular titles. Something like they did for the OG Xbox on the 360. If you customize the emulation for select titles, it could work. Talk about a resource drain (i.e. employee time) though; I'd prefer to focus those efforts on new titles.
 
That would be major news. This is something I don't think Sony could pull off due to dat cell. But I guess that's what PS Now is all about.
 
Sounds more like a denial than a consideration to me.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking after reading it. "No current plans and it's pretty hard to do." seems pretty far from "Oh yeah, we've got that figured out and we'll put it in a near future update for funsies."
 
I could never get why people so desperately need backwards compatibility. I don't buy a new system to play old games.

I'd love to be able to replay KOTOR and The Warriors and ToeJam and Earl III...

Backward compatibility seems a great way to capitalize on manufacturer's console history and to reward fans who may have purchased multiple iterations of a platform over the course of a decade or more.

I know it's easier said than done and is usually imperfect in its delivery. But I like the idea of backward compatibility.
 
They never get the Xbox360 emulated on the Xbox One. It would even be impossible to do this on an actual high end pc.

Even the latest Wii emulators on PCs don't give an appealing gaming experience. The framerate is unsteady, even with 30 FPS games (but most games on Wii use 60 FPS anyway) the controls only a ghost of the original ones.

The controls should be fine on a Xbox360, because of the "old fashioned" controller. But emulating the Xbox360-PowerPC and eDRAM is an impossible task even on latest PCs.

Straight-up hardware emulation is impossible, but there's a substantial chance that nigh-all hardware-intensive calls pass through a version of directX API, which could be reasonably be compiled for x86-64. It also depends on how much "Coding to the metal" was allowed, and how easy it is to pack it back to directX calls.

While we, outsiders, could just try to emulate the hardware, microsoft has the access to both games' and drivers' source, which means they could fix and recompile for a different platform.
 
Straight-up hardware emulation is impossible, but there's a substantial chance that nigh-all hardware-intensive calls pass through a version of directX API, which could be reasonably be compiled for x86-64. It also depends on how much "Coding to the metal" was allowed, and how easy it is to pack it back to directX calls.

While we, outsiders, could just try to emulate the hardware, microsoft has the access to both games' and drivers' source, which means they could fix and recompile for a different platform.

This is where the answer lies. Highly optimized dynamic recompilation and/or wrappers built from their internal tools. Very high level emulation. Because the power definitely is not there for low level emulation.

It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff.

What an awful oversimplification made to sound like it means something to people who don't know better. PPC to X86 is something that has been researched and worked on for a long, long time (see Rosetta, PearPC, Dolphin). It should be a relatively minor hurdle compared to the much more complex aspects on the 360 to deal with (the GPU).
 
Pretty much a confirmation of it never happening. Not surprising, though the thread title got me.

I'm still bummed the rumors of a small form factor all digital 360 were bogus.
 
Ha ha, so Internet is suddenly being considered as an issue for users now, but before they thought it was fine users to have Internet access 24/7? Ha ha.

Not sure why people are saying stuff like this, lol. Needing basic internet access for a small check-in authentication once every 24 hrs is nowhere near the same as needing fast internet for constant streaming of high performance gameplay that requires fast controller response.
 
Running PPC code on x86 is one of the more straightforward translation jobs since it's been done so many times before, e.g. Rosetta. But whether the performance is good enough for games is the issue.
 
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