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Xbox Backwards Compatibility |OT3| All that power to play old games

Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
intbal

intbal

Member
Perhaps Microsoft can encourage other studios to patch their earlier XBO games that are tragically locked at unnecessarily low performance/detail levels due to their early arrival on Xbox One hardware.
I'm looking at you, Ryse and Recore...
 
Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Crimson Skies with system link across four generations of Xbox


EpEGL7ZXYAArHAW
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
Once I get cought up with current gen, I can't wait to dig into Dragon Age & DA2, whivh I picked up for a few bucks each in the last sale...
 
T-Cake

T-Cake

Member
With the Xbox team not mentioning anything more about Xbox One-only games (not X enhanced) getting resolution increases on Xbox Series X|S, it makes me think they are trying to apply it to every single title rather than piecemeal as with the 360 games. So although they only showed Gears of War Ultimate, it could be every pre-X title that gets it.
 
CatLady

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
Cornbread78 said:
Once I get cought up with current gen, I can't wait to dig into Dragon Age & DA2, whivh I picked up for a few bucks each in the last sale...
Click to expand...

I've gotten so used to being able to pretty much play any Xbox game on the One X and now the Series X, I find myself taking it for granted sometimes. I sometimes forget how awesome is Xbox BC.

I see Sony fans whining for remasters of Dead Space or Fallout 3 (which I'm playing right now with ZERO loading times and QR) or all excited for a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy (which I played again last year on my One X) and realize how lucky I am that I can still play those and tons other great games like DA:O on my current gen console.

People that are PS5 only can't play the great past gen games unless they have a pile of dusty old consoles laying around.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
CatLady said:
I've gotten so used to being able to pretty much play any Xbox game on the One X and now the Series X, I find myself taking it for granted sometimes. I sometimes forget how awesome is Xbox BC.

I see Sony fans whining for remasters of Dead Space or Fallout 3 (which I'm playing right now with ZERO loading times and QR) or all excited for a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy (which I played again last year on my One X) and realize how lucky I am that I can still play those and tons other great games like DA:O on my current gen console.

People that are PS5 only can't play the great past gen games unless they have a pile of dusty old consoles laying around.
Click to expand...

Well, luckily, I have my old fatty PS3 that plays PS1/2/3 games (I just added a 500gb ssd) and my PS5 for 4/5 games, so I'll all set pairing it up with my SeX and I'm good for the new gen...
 
wipeout364

wipeout364

Member
CatLady said:
I've gotten so used to being able to pretty much play any Xbox game on the One X and now the Series X, I find myself taking it for granted sometimes. I sometimes forget how awesome is Xbox BC.

I see Sony fans whining for remasters of Dead Space or Fallout 3 (which I'm playing right now with ZERO loading times and QR) or all excited for a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy (which I played again last year on my One X) and realize how lucky I am that I can still play those and tons other great games like DA:O on my current gen console.

People that are PS5 only can't play the great past gen games unless they have a pile of dusty old consoles laying around.
Click to expand...
It's great I agree 100%, It's the main reason I switched to primarily playing on Xbox last gen from being more focused on playstation at the start of the gen. I love that everything I bought from last gen is right there ready to go on my series X, as well as a big chunk of my 360 purchases. It's amazing.
 
BigBooper

BigBooper

Member
So games have to be patched to add 4K textures for them to run at 4k? Or does it up-res to 4k?

Because I started up GTA4 yesterday and it runs a lot smoother at 60fps, but it still looks like lumpy poo.
 
rapid32.5

rapid32.5

Member
Xbox on Instagram has been teasing today with all Forza games with slogan "Racing through the history of a classic".
 
Last edited:
01011001

01011001

Banned
Night.Ninja said:
Original xbox games get a 4k up res
Click to expand...

that's not quite true, they get a 16x up res from their SD mode (some Xbox games supported 720p and 1080i but these modes are not used in Back Compat). that is at best 1920p
some games, for example Panzer Dragoon Orta are below this. Orta runs at 1512p as the original game ran at a very low resolution of 378p

so no og Xbox game actually reaches 2160p (4K) they can reach up to 1920p and some are below this.
they don't get individual resolution boosts, the emulation layer simply does a blanket 16x resolution increase on all of them that means 4x the horizontal resolution and 4x the vertical resolution.

on Xbox 360 games with X enhanced patches this is similar, they get a 6x up res. so x3 on each axis. a 720p Xbox 360 game that has an X patch will therefore render at 2160p (4K)

BigBooper said:
So games have to be patched to add 4K textures for them to run at 4k? Or does it up-res to 4k?

Because I started up GTA4 yesterday and it runs a lot smoother at 60fps, but it still looks like lumpy poo.
Click to expand...

GTA4 has no patch, it runs at it's original 640p resolution. but it has no FPS lock, therefore on the Series X|S it will basically lock to 60fps. the One X did not quite get there as the CPU was still shit in that one. on One X it hovers at around 40 to 60 fps depending on load.
and yes, 360 games need patches. but they don't add 4K textures or any real change in the game, all they do is run games at higher resolution should they be patched. 3 or 4 games or so also had their HDR capabilities unlocked. again this was not added by Microsoft, this was the games already supporting this but on og hardware the games tonemapped this down to SDR. one such game is Mirror's Edge (which looks glorious at 4K with HDR btw... if they now patched it to run at 60fps too it would be amazing)

og Xbox games are exempt from this as they all get a resolution boost, no matter which game. the boost for og Xbox is 4x on Base Xbox One and S, 16x on One X and Series X and a 9x boost on the Series S
max resolution then (if the original version ran at 480p) for og Xbox games on these systems is:
Xbox One/S = 960p (x4 boost)
Xbox Series S = 1440p (9x boost)
Xbox One X/Series X = 1920p (16x boost)

and here the max resolution for Xbox 360 games (if the original version ran at 720p) that got an enhanced patch:
Xbox One/S = (no change)
Xbox Series S = 1440p (4x boost)
Xbox One X/Series X = 2160p (9x boost)

there is an odd one here tho, and that game is Perfect Dark HD. That game runs natively at 1080p60 even on Xbox 360... this game got an Xbox One X enhanced patch back in the day... so by the logic of One X patches this game would get a 4x boost on Series S and a 9x Boost on One X/Series X... this means if they didn't do a special patch just for this game, where the resolution multipliers are changed... then the game should run at 2160p on Series S and at a whopping 3240p!!! on One X and Series X! that's basically 6k!

I am very surprised that Digital Foundry didn't take a look at this one yet tbh. or NXGamer NXGamer for that matter
 
Last edited:
BigBooper

BigBooper

Member
01011001 said:
that's not quite true, they get a 16x up res from their SD mode (some Xbox games supported 720p and 1080i but these modes are not used in Back Compat). that is at best 1920p
some games, for example Panzer Dragoon Orta are below this. Orta runs at 1512p as the original game ran at a very low resolution of 378p

so no og Xbox game actually reaches 2160p (4K) they can reach up to 1920p and some are below this.
they don't get individual resolution boosts, the emulation layer simply does a blanket 16x resolution increase on all of them that means 4x the horizontal resolution and 4x the vertical resolution.

on Xbox 360 games with X enhanced patches this is similar, they get a 6x up res. so x3 on each axis. a 720p Xbox 360 game that has an X patch will therefore render at 2160p (4K)



GTA4 has no patch, it runs at it's original 640p resolution. but it has no FPS lock, therefore on the Series X|S it will basically lock to 60fps. the One X did not quite get there as the CPU was still shit in that one. on One X it hovers at around 40 to 60 fps depending on load.
and yes, 360 games need patches. but they don't add 4K textures or any real change in the game, all they do is run games at higher resolution should they be patched. 3 or 4 games or so also had their HDR capabilities unlocked. again this was not added by Microsoft, this was the games already supporting this but on og hardware the games tonemapped this down to SDR. one such game is Mirror's Edge (which looks glorious at 4K with HDR btw... if they now patched it to run at 60fps too it would be amazing)

og Xbox games are exempt from this as they all get a resolution boost, no matter which game. the boost for og Xbox is 4x on Base Xbox One and S, 16x on One X and Series X and a 9x boost on the Series S
max resolution then (if the original version ran at 480p) for og Xbox games on these systems is:
Xbox One/S = 960p (x4 boost)
Xbox Series S = 1440p (9x boost)
Xbox One X/Series X = 1920p (16x boost)

and here the max resolution for Xbox 360 games (if the original version ran at 720p) that got an enhanced patch:
Xbox One/S = (no change)
Xbox Series S = 1440p (4x boost)
Xbox One X/Series X = 2160p (9x boost)

there is an odd one here tho, and that game is Perfect Dark HD. That game runs natively at 1080p60 even on Xbox 360... this game got an Xbox One X enhanced patch back in the day... so by the logic of One X patches this game would get a 4x boost on Series S and a 9x Boost on One X/Series X... this means if they didn't do a special patch just for this game, where the resolution multipliers are changed... then the game should run at 2160p on Series S and at a whopping 3240p!!! on One X and Series X! that's basically 6k!

I am very surprised that Digital Foundry didn't take a look at this one yet tbh. or NXGamer NXGamer for that matter
Click to expand...
I wonder if MS will take initiative and get some of these patched. GTA4 is a pretty huge impact game, so it should get priority for patching, but maybe they have to get the publisher to do it. GOG patches some of the old games themselves to make them work on modern hardware, so you'd think MS could afford to do it, if the contracts allow.
 
01011001

01011001

Banned
BigBooper said:
I wonder if MS will take initiative and get some of these patched. GTA4 is a pretty huge impact game, so it should get priority for patching, but maybe they have to get the publisher to do it. GOG patches some of the old games themselves to make them work on modern hardware, so you'd think MS could afford to do it, if the contracts allow.
Click to expand...

well they do, but they could do more I agree. especially the Series X should have absolutely no issue giving every single 360 game a res boost.
the issue is that every single game they patch needs to be green lit by the publisher. some might not want a free remaster to be thrown out there. look how much some of them make rereleasing their games over and over.

I was surprised enough that the Bioshock games became backwards compatible after the remasters came out. especially since many didn't like the graphical changes made to them. and on One X you could play Bioshock 1 and 2 at 60fps (the game luckily has an option to remove the 30fps cap in the options menu)

so it's the issue that every game needs an ok from the publishers, and then they need to test the games. some may get huge graphical bugs when you simply apply a resolution boost. some might to be heavily optimized. it's not that easy. and GOG does this with usually very VERY old titles, and they also don't really enhance them usually, they just make sure they run on Windows 10 and on modern GPUs
 
Last edited:
Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
news.xbox.com

Making Backward Compatible Games Even Better with FPS Boost - Xbox Wire

When we were designing Xbox Series X|S, we knew we wanted to continue our commitment to compatibility we started back in 2015, enabling gamers to play their favorite titles from past generations on the new consoles. Nearly all titles benefit from next generation features like faster loading...
news.xbox.com news.xbox.com
www.theverge.com

Microsoft’s new FPS Boost mode for Xbox Series X and S can double frame rates in games

This new feature can double or even quadruple frame rates in certain existing games.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
www.windowscentral.com

Xbox FPS Boost brings 60 FPS and 120 FPS backward compatible game boost on Xbox Series X, S

An older generation of titles gets new life.
www.windowscentral.com www.windowscentral.com
www.eurogamer.net

Xbox Series FPS Boost: five Xbox One games now run at 2x frame-rate

Microsoft today lifts the lid on its brand new FPS Boost technology - a series of system level tweaks that allows legac…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net


 
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Andodalf

Andodalf

Banned
Mmnow said:
Never. I'd bet you'd see a remaster before you see a patch, and I'd bet against it getting a remaster .

I'm basing this entirely on not getting my hopes up.
Click to expand...

It's just so annoying that All the actual BGS games are enhanced and it's not, even though they've owned obsidian! You can play Morrowind in 4k 60 for goodness sake!
 
K

Kimahri

Banned
I just hope they start adding and upressing more titles again soon. I don't care about fps boost, for some of these older low res titles, upressing will have a much bigger impact.
 
P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Kimahri said:
I just hope they start adding and upressing more titles again soon. I don't care about fps boost, for some of these older low res titles, upressing will have a much bigger impact.
Click to expand...
Do we have any news about adding new titles or increasing the titles that get upressed?
 
TLZ

TLZ

Banned
Just started Skyrim and went to the mods section. As it was loading, the message said achievements will be disabled. Is this true for Xbox??
 
Bernkastel

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
TLZ said:
Just started Skyrim and went to the mods section. As it was loading, the message said achievements will be disabled. Is this true for Xbox??
Click to expand...
Yeah, modding disables achievements. All Creation Engine games should be played on PC for the endless modding tools. They have done a great job at Xbox modding support but its nowhere near that of PC.
 
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Reactions: TLZ
It's all in the wrist

It's all in the wrist

Member
So, are some old Xbox games broken with auto HDR or something? Psychonauts looks ok, but it feels like everything else is darker. Wondering if there are known issues lists somewhere.
 
Roberts

Roberts

Member
It's all in the wrist said:
So, are some old Xbox games broken with auto HDR or something? Psychonauts looks ok, but it feels like everything else is darker. Wondering if there are known issues lists somewhere.
Click to expand...
Was it always like that? My suggestion would be to reconfigure HDR settings on your Xbox and fine-tune it and see if it helps. But, yeah, some games just look a bit off with AHDR turned on.
 
P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Aside from the very welcomed FPS boost, are we getting new titles in the BC program? What are the titles they have added to the BC program since March?
 
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intbal

intbal

Member
MadViking said:
I noticed today that several 360 games have been recently updated. The games are: Far Cry Classic, MGS HD Collection, Battlefield 3, Red Dead Redemption and Too Human. Maybe the FPS boost is finally coming?
Click to expand...

Too Human? They keep wasting time on that turd?
Perfect Dark Zero is in dire need of a doubled framerate.
 
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