Regarding backwards compatibility, it seems like thats going to be on a kind of a selective basis from what we gatheris that correct?
We are working very hard to get compatibility. Of course the prioritization in our technical work is in the leading selling games from the first generation, just like the PS2 didnt run all PS1 games, it is unlikely well ever be able to say the 360 will run all Xbox 1 games. I think there are some games if we get them to run that means many, many other games will run, and I think rather than give some statement that is either too conservative (because the engineers can do better), or a bold statement we cant live up to, we thought wed make our strategy clear that as we get further down the road and as our engineers do more work, the execution will speak for itself.
And theres also the possibility of patching over Live to allow for more games down the roadis that something thats being looked at?
Robbie Bach, Chief Xbox Officer: Sure, theres a number of different ways you can distribute the capability. The thing you have to recognize is we got to a point at E3 that we said look, theres so much speculation about this even though the work is ongoing, we should just deal with it and get people focused on the right thing rather than on the wrong thing. We wanted people knowing were doing the work, but you dont want to say were going to do every single game, because we dont know that to be a fact today.
Ballmer: Weve actually dealt with this issue more than any other company in the world (with every Windows release). The truth of the matter is we run a high percentage of apps, and every Windows release we hear about the apps that dont run. But because there are fewer console releases than there are Windows releases, its even more of a front and center question. But I think we have a pretty good sense of how to do this. Live gives us another asset to go after this, of coursewe have a strong Live base, but its still only a few million people at this stage, its not all of our installed base, so we cant count on it as the only mechanism to try to get the strongest backward compatibility possible.
Will backwards compatibility be determined on sales if you proceed with the plan as you have? Will it just be the best-selling platinum hits?
Id say it a little differently. Id say what we will do is pick a set of titles and do all the technical work to get those to work. The truth is when you do some of those titles, you do get dozens to hundreds of other titles because you take any game that pushes the system and exercises it. If you can make backward compatibility happen for it, youd handle any game that has a subset of what it does. So its wrong to say its about individual games, its right to say were going to prioritize the general purpose technologies based upon that which is in that league of games.
Bach: The other thing you can say is you can assume Halo and Halo 2 are fairly close to the top of the list
[laughter] for both the reasons Steve states. Because theyre top selling games and theyre some of the most technically complicated games
Ballmer: ...so if you get those two, youll get a lot of other stuff.
