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I heard once that Xbox one supports 360 games by using emulation. Is this true?

by atum47 3y ago

Al0neStar 3y ago
Yes. Number of games that are backward compatible out of the total released [0]: Xbox : 63/996 (6.32%) Xbox 360: 633/2154 (29.38%) As you can see the numbers are very disappointing. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_games_for_Xbox_One_and_Series_X/S https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_...
- causality0 3y ago
  What happens when you weight it for sales numbers? Personally I've only ever had one 360 game not be compatible with my xbone.
- p1necone 3y ago
  It's worth noting that those numbers are partially because of licensing, not just technical constraints. All of the original publishing contracts allowed Microsoft to sell Xbox/Xbox 360 games on those systems specifically, so Microsoft had to seek permission from each and every relevant third party publisher before making each title backwards compatible. From what I understand original Xbox compatibility on the 360 was similar, with 462/996 games ultimately being compatible "officially" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_...). But with a jailbroken system compatibility is actually a fair bit better (https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:Original_Xbox_Games_Compatibility_List https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:Original_Xbox_Games_Co...). Afaik there is no similar jailbreak for Xbox one/series, but if anyone ever does manage to get their internal emulator running with arbitrary titles I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more games work than their official numbers suggest.
  - nullify88 3y ago
    I don't understand why contracts don't include provisions that allow Microsoft or other console manufacturers to emulate or have the game run on future consoles. Surely it'd be in the publishers interest to keep the game alive?
    - bpye 3y ago
      I work at Microsoft but have no inside knowledge. Presumably that wasn’t a consideration at the time? I suspect it is today, since games released for Xbox One can also be purchased on Series S/X…
    - dmonitor 3y ago
      publishers want to resell the games at full price. your copy from 2002 still working conflicts with that motive. hell, they don’t even want to sell it to you these days. they’d much prefer you rent.
monocasa 3y ago
Yep, it's an emulator codenamed fission: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission
landr0id 3y ago
Former Microsoft employee here who occasionally had reason to work with the emulation team. It’s truly a thing of wonder and I hope they do a public talk on it someday. There are so many crazy tricks they’ve done that deserve recognition.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  If I was to wager a guess... they are using a form of static recompilation. This is why they need to have the binary downloaded to function. It would also explain how they could reconcile the differences between the PPC floating point length and the x87 code on Xbox One/X/S for specific titles. They aren't so much pure emulation as they are binary conversions with intermediate interpreter for API calls (GPU/APU/IO etc). Combine this with splitting the 6 threads across 6 cores instead of the original 3 cores and this is how they could get reasonable performance out of the Jaguar chip. There would be a lot more to it than that but that is just my basic theory. Would also explain the slow roll out. I think this is the same thing they would have done getting the original Xbox onto the 360. But just a theory.
  - NovaDudely 3y ago
    To add to this another little theory I have about the original Xbox compatibility. When Xbox first came out MS wasn't too strict on the TRC of titles, this is why you saw some stuff that seemed to punch above their weight. Wreckless released in early 2002 was pushing the pixel shaders hard and in a way not really seen much elsewhere on the system. This isn't it looking at it's best but it give you a vague idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyuFBMs78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyuFBMs78E But I suspect that as the relations between Intel and Nvidia soured, MS realize they didn't have a great path toward backward compatibility ahead of them. By enforcing the TRC more and pushing things like XNA they could at least focus the games so that emulation via PPC wouldn't be such a huge task. So you had things like Halo 2 and Doom 3 get support long before a lot of earlier titles, if they ever got support.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      XNA died when the people behind it left, thus the C++ side won once again, and DirectXTK was born as replacement. https://walbourn.github.io/directxtk/ https://walbourn.github.io/directxtk/ Years later they kind of sponsored Monogame, when they were recovering from XBox One mess, https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2016/03/14/letter-chris-charla-idxbox-updates-gdc/ https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2016/03/14/letter-chris-charla-i... By the way, I think one of these episodes talks about the emulation, but I am not certain if it was on this podcast I heard about it. https://theretrohour.com/?s=xbox https://theretrohour.com/?s=xbox

I heard once that Xbox one supports 360 games by using emulation. Is this true?

by atum47 3y ago

I heard once that Xbox one supports 360 games by using emulation. Is this true?

Yes. Number of games that are backward compatible out of the total released [0]: Xbox : 63/996 (6.32%) Xbox 360: 633/2154 (29.38%) As you can see the numbers are very disappointing. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_games_for_Xbox_One_and_Series_X/S https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_...

causality0 3y ago
What happens when you weight it for sales numbers? Personally I've only ever had one 360 game not be compatible with my xbone.
p1necone 3y ago
It's worth noting that those numbers are partially because of licensing, not just technical constraints. All of the original publishing contracts allowed Microsoft to sell Xbox/Xbox 360 games on those systems specifically, so Microsoft had to seek permission from each and every relevant third party publisher before making each title backwards compatible. From what I understand original Xbox compatibility on the 360 was similar, with 462/996 games ultimately being compatible "officially" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_...). But with a jailbroken system compatibility is actually a fair bit better (https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:Original_Xbox_Games_Compatibility_List https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox_360:Original_Xbox_Games_Co...). Afaik there is no similar jailbreak for Xbox one/series, but if anyone ever does manage to get their internal emulator running with arbitrary titles I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more games work than their official numbers suggest.
- nullify88 3y ago
  I don't understand why contracts don't include provisions that allow Microsoft or other console manufacturers to emulate or have the game run on future consoles. Surely it'd be in the publishers interest to keep the game alive?
  - bpye 3y ago
    I work at Microsoft but have no inside knowledge. Presumably that wasn’t a consideration at the time? I suspect it is today, since games released for Xbox One can also be purchased on Series S/X…
  - dmonitor 3y ago
    publishers want to resell the games at full price. your copy from 2002 still working conflicts with that motive. hell, they don’t even want to sell it to you these days. they’d much prefer you rent.

monocasa 3y ago

Yep, it's an emulator codenamed fission: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission

landr0id 3y ago

Former Microsoft employee here who occasionally had reason to work with the emulation team. It’s truly a thing of wonder and I hope they do a public talk on it someday. There are so many crazy tricks they’ve done that deserve recognition.

NovaDudely 3y ago
If I was to wager a guess... they are using a form of static recompilation. This is why they need to have the binary downloaded to function. It would also explain how they could reconcile the differences between the PPC floating point length and the x87 code on Xbox One/X/S for specific titles. They aren't so much pure emulation as they are binary conversions with intermediate interpreter for API calls (GPU/APU/IO etc). Combine this with splitting the 6 threads across 6 cores instead of the original 3 cores and this is how they could get reasonable performance out of the Jaguar chip. There would be a lot more to it than that but that is just my basic theory. Would also explain the slow roll out. I think this is the same thing they would have done getting the original Xbox onto the 360. But just a theory.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  To add to this another little theory I have about the original Xbox compatibility. When Xbox first came out MS wasn't too strict on the TRC of titles, this is why you saw some stuff that seemed to punch above their weight. Wreckless released in early 2002 was pushing the pixel shaders hard and in a way not really seen much elsewhere on the system. This isn't it looking at it's best but it give you a vague idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyuFBMs78E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyuFBMs78E But I suspect that as the relations between Intel and Nvidia soured, MS realize they didn't have a great path toward backward compatibility ahead of them. By enforcing the TRC more and pushing things like XNA they could at least focus the games so that emulation via PPC wouldn't be such a huge task. So you had things like Halo 2 and Doom 3 get support long before a lot of earlier titles, if they ever got support.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    XNA died when the people behind it left, thus the C++ side won once again, and DirectXTK was born as replacement. https://walbourn.github.io/directxtk/ https://walbourn.github.io/directxtk/ Years later they kind of sponsored Monogame, when they were recovering from XBox One mess, https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2016/03/14/letter-chris-charla-idxbox-updates-gdc/ https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2016/03/14/letter-chris-charla-i... By the way, I think one of these episodes talks about the emulation, but I am not certain if it was on this podcast I heard about it. https://theretrohour.com/?s=xbox https://theretrohour.com/?s=xbox