9 ms·

Xbox has a new team dedicated to game preservation and forward compatibility

108 points by cglong 3y ago

Zambyte 3y ago
[flagged]
- juice_bus 3y ago
  How long until this team isn't profitable and is let go anyway?
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    the team supports the subscription model of the future. until all potentially “saveable” games are saved, or at least those over a certain popularity threshold, there is customer value to be squeezed. all the old content is valuable, because it doesn’t matter what you play, or if you play. as long as you pay.
  - thatgerhard 3y ago
    they will probably just run emulators for that
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    Honestly probably a while. Selling the same game over and over with minimal changes is quite profitable (see: call of duty, fifa, etc). Selling the same game over and over again with no changes... probably more so.
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      Certainly working for Nintendo. Does the NES mario game require any porting effort? Yet it gets repeatedly sold on their virtual stores.
      - pxx 3y ago
        They might not even be using their own efforts to "port". Here's an article suggesting that they just downloaded a pirated ROM off the Internet to resell to users: https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-...
  - flamwenco 3y ago
    Considering they previously ended the back compat program like 3 years ago... I'd bet not that long
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lelandfe 3y ago
This is about selling older games in their digital store, not about ensuring your old disks can still run, right?
- jsheard 3y ago
  Microsoft's strategy is somewhere between the two, you can put an Xbox 360 disc into a newer Xbox system but what it actually does is download a recompiled version of the game and just uses the original disc as a DRM key to run it. Alternatively you can buy the game digitally and play the recompiled version without a disc, if you want.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    Perhaps I'm speaking out of ignorance, but that just seems... excessive. The game's on the disc, why not just play it instead of downloading the whole damn thing? Can someone explain why this option is preferable to just playing what's on the disc? Edit: Three immediate, simultaneous, and helpful responses - thank you! :)
    - airstrike 3y ago
      you'd have to emulate the 360 arch in software so just probably just easier to download a recompiled game than to solve all emulation challenges and edge cases
      - chatmasta 3y ago
        I believe that Microsoft actually does emulate the 360 [0] [1]. But compiling the game allows them to deal with some subtleties and also provide upscaled assets where possible. [0] https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/23/the-untold-story-of-xbox-one-backwards-compatibility https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/23/the-untold-story-of-...
    - ihuman 3y ago
      The version it downloads isn't the version on the disk. The disc version is compiled for the Xbox 360, not the One/Series.
fbdab103 3y ago
This does not seem an impossible problem for the likes of Microsoft. They own all of the Xbox APIs and backwards compatibility is in their DNA. Especially now that consoles are just regular computer hardware with a funny hat. I think the business people calculated that keeping the full game library available for the initial investment of compatibility APIs is totally worth it. It becomes a huge differentiator if Sony cannot/does not follow the playbook. Sell your game on Xbox. Forever.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  >They own all of the Xbox APIs APIs don't mean much here as the Xbox 360 ran a completely different architecture, that's tricky to emulate reliably on X86_AMD64. Which is why Sony gave up on the idea of emulating PS3 games.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    I'm not sure how much of this applies to the X-Box X series SoC Details on '360 compatibility. "...certain aspects of the Xbox 360 hardware design are indeed built into the Xbox One processor - specifically, support for texture formats and audio..."[0] [0] https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-back-compat-how-does-it-actually-work https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-bac...
    - Rinzler89 3y ago
      Support for texture and audio are nto the tricky part so emulating the 360. It'sa the parts of the 360 IBM Cell processor silicone that's tricky.
_fat_santa 3y ago
I really like what MS is doing with the Series S/X. I don't play video games all that much but when I do, I like turning on games that make me nostalgic for when I was a kid. So far I've bought a number of older games off the Xbox store and for games that aren't available I run the Xbox in dev mode and run a PS2 emulator. I'm particularly impressed with XBSX2 and PCSX2, I have an OG PS2 (fat one) but I seldomly use it because when you plug it into a big screen TV the graphics are all out of whack because it was designed with older "fat" TV's in mind. The emulators though allow you to upscale graphics which makes them so much more playable on a large screen TV. Granted there are bugs and various issues you have to get over and setting up the entire system can be a little challenging and time consuming but it's hard to complain. And overall I think the Series S is one of the best bangs for your buck in the game console space, at $299, it's much cheaper than even the PS5 digital edition that comes in at $450. Though I bought mine back during the "PS5 Crunch" where the only PS5's you could find online were all resellers that marked them up 1.5-2X the original price, so $299 versus $600-700 was a great deal.
- nolok 3y ago
  > And overall I think the Series S is one of the best bangs for your buck in the game console space, at $299 It's funny that you think that because it's absolutely right of course, and it's a big part of what killed microsoft hopes and dreams to "forget the xone era and try and catch back to what we achieved in the 360 era". Unlike Sony, MS didn't make both console equal beside optical drive, they made the S less performant and then made it so any game must have every features on both S and X. What this means, in effect, is that player buying the S don't lose out, that game can cut features on Xbox (rather than have it on X but not on S), that xbox dev is standardized on the S stopping the X from showing it's capacilities, and that microsoft can't react to the ps5 pro let alone use the occasion to solve that early mistake because according to their own numbers something like 70+% of their sales are S. Coupled with the complete lack of worthy first party or dedicated IP beside Forza, this destroyed Xbox ambitions. Microsoft is going all in on gamepass, and it might very well work out in the end (I don't personally think so not until their fix their internal quality game developpement issues, and it's starting to show cracks), but they're not doing it after a nice analysis but because they realized they've so absolutely lost yet another console generation.
glimshe 3y ago
I can't believe some people here are criticizing MS. I got a Series X and digital games I had bought almost 20 years ago on the very first iteration of the XBOX Digital Store simply worked with no extra fees. I don't know anyone else delivering this kind of backwards compatibility.
- decide1000 3y ago
  Why should they charge extra fees? You bought it.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    It's contrary to what Sony and Nintendo did, where there was no backwards compatibility from the PS3 to the PS4 or from the Wii U to the Switch, and the games that were manually ported over were re-launched at full price with no discount for those who already bought the original. Microsoft are the only ones who made a significant effort to keep games working across generations with very different hardware architectures and didn't charge for the privilege of playing your existing library.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    Games often use licensed third party assets like copyrighted music or various SW libraries for graphics or networking. That copyrighted content is licensed to them for a fixed number of years. After that license period expires, they're no longer allowed to sell the game, unless they negociate again a new license agreement with whoever owns that IP now, which is often too much of a headache, and if they do renew it, it means a new release of the game for extra money to offset the new licensing costs. Emulation works around that since it relies on users who already bought the content from when the license was still in effect, but again, it's and effort from Microsoft to provide the emulation environment which is something the likes of Nintendo and Sony abandoned, since it brings little revenue for the extra costs. It's a lot more complex issue than just "all game devs = evil".
grzeshru 3y ago
Bought an xbone recently for a few titles, all my old Xbox games work. Nothing more to add.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pbj1968 3y ago
I own every generation of Xbox. Multiples of most. I have gotten an incredible deal on each and every one. And the physical and digital games typically go cheap quickly. 20+ years. Not sure what their strategy is but I’ve benefited.
- haunter 3y ago
  Wish Xbox All Access were available in more countries
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
I don't understand how Microsoft handle's Xbox backwards compatibility on the Series S/X, but under the hood there are clearly stubs to trampoline original expected behaviors to unsupported dialog messages. Some legacy games appear to not support split-screen anymore, as far as I can tell from the store pages of specific Xbox 360-era games. All-in-all, it's a subpar experience that I think will only continue to be disappointing, and the only real solution is to find used hardware and play the games in the manner they were originally designed. Anything off the digital stores will be subject to alteration, sometimes just because they can, it seems.
Kalanos 3y ago
halo 3 online?

108 points by cglong 3y ago

Zambyte 3y ago

[flagged]

juice_bus 3y ago
How long until this team isn't profitable and is let go anyway?
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  the team supports the subscription model of the future. until all potentially “saveable” games are saved, or at least those over a certain popularity threshold, there is customer value to be squeezed. all the old content is valuable, because it doesn’t matter what you play, or if you play. as long as you pay.
- thatgerhard 3y ago
  they will probably just run emulators for that
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Honestly probably a while. Selling the same game over and over with minimal changes is quite profitable (see: call of duty, fifa, etc). Selling the same game over and over again with no changes... probably more so.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    Certainly working for Nintendo. Does the NES mario game require any porting effort? Yet it gets repeatedly sold on their virtual stores.
    - pxx 3y ago
      They might not even be using their own efforts to "port". Here's an article suggesting that they just downloaded a pirated ROM off the Internet to resell to users: https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-...
- flamwenco 3y ago
  Considering they previously ended the back compat program like 3 years ago... I'd bet not that long
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lelandfe 3y ago

This is about selling older games in their digital store, not about ensuring your old disks can still run, right?

jsheard 3y ago
Microsoft's strategy is somewhere between the two, you can put an Xbox 360 disc into a newer Xbox system but what it actually does is download a recompiled version of the game and just uses the original disc as a DRM key to run it. Alternatively you can buy the game digitally and play the recompiled version without a disc, if you want.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Perhaps I'm speaking out of ignorance, but that just seems... excessive. The game's on the disc, why not just play it instead of downloading the whole damn thing? Can someone explain why this option is preferable to just playing what's on the disc? Edit: Three immediate, simultaneous, and helpful responses - thank you! :)
  - airstrike 3y ago
    you'd have to emulate the 360 arch in software so just probably just easier to download a recompiled game than to solve all emulation challenges and edge cases
    - chatmasta 3y ago
      I believe that Microsoft actually does emulate the 360 [0] [1]. But compiling the game allows them to deal with some subtleties and also provide upscaled assets where possible. [0] https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/23/the-untold-story-of-xbox-one-backwards-compatibility https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/23/the-untold-story-of-...
  - ihuman 3y ago
    The version it downloads isn't the version on the disk. The disc version is compiled for the Xbox 360, not the One/Series.

fbdab103 3y ago

This does not seem an impossible problem for the likes of Microsoft. They own all of the Xbox APIs and backwards compatibility is in their DNA. Especially now that consoles are just regular computer hardware with a funny hat. I think the business people calculated that keeping the full game library available for the initial investment of compatibility APIs is totally worth it. It becomes a huge differentiator if Sony cannot/does not follow the playbook. Sell your game on Xbox. Forever.

Rinzler89 3y ago
>They own all of the Xbox APIs APIs don't mean much here as the Xbox 360 ran a completely different architecture, that's tricky to emulate reliably on X86_AMD64. Which is why Sony gave up on the idea of emulating PS3 games.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  I'm not sure how much of this applies to the X-Box X series SoC Details on '360 compatibility. "...certain aspects of the Xbox 360 hardware design are indeed built into the Xbox One processor - specifically, support for texture formats and audio..."[0] [0] https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-back-compat-how-does-it-actually-work https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-bac...
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    Support for texture and audio are nto the tricky part so emulating the 360. It'sa the parts of the 360 IBM Cell processor silicone that's tricky.

_fat_santa 3y ago

I really like what MS is doing with the Series S/X. I don't play video games all that much but when I do, I like turning on games that make me nostalgic for when I was a kid. So far I've bought a number of older games off the Xbox store and for games that aren't available I run the Xbox in dev mode and run a PS2 emulator. I'm particularly impressed with XBSX2 and PCSX2, I have an OG PS2 (fat one) but I seldomly use it because when you plug it into a big screen TV the graphics are all out of whack because it was designed with older "fat" TV's in mind. The emulators though allow you to upscale graphics which makes them so much more playable on a large screen TV. Granted there are bugs and various issues you have to get over and setting up the entire system can be a little challenging and time consuming but it's hard to complain. And overall I think the Series S is one of the best bangs for your buck in the game console space, at $299, it's much cheaper than even the PS5 digital edition that comes in at $450. Though I bought mine back during the "PS5 Crunch" where the only PS5's you could find online were all resellers that marked them up 1.5-2X the original price, so $299 versus $600-700 was a great deal.

nolok 3y ago
> And overall I think the Series S is one of the best bangs for your buck in the game console space, at $299 It's funny that you think that because it's absolutely right of course, and it's a big part of what killed microsoft hopes and dreams to "forget the xone era and try and catch back to what we achieved in the 360 era". Unlike Sony, MS didn't make both console equal beside optical drive, they made the S less performant and then made it so any game must have every features on both S and X. What this means, in effect, is that player buying the S don't lose out, that game can cut features on Xbox (rather than have it on X but not on S), that xbox dev is standardized on the S stopping the X from showing it's capacilities, and that microsoft can't react to the ps5 pro let alone use the occasion to solve that early mistake because according to their own numbers something like 70+% of their sales are S. Coupled with the complete lack of worthy first party or dedicated IP beside Forza, this destroyed Xbox ambitions. Microsoft is going all in on gamepass, and it might very well work out in the end (I don't personally think so not until their fix their internal quality game developpement issues, and it's starting to show cracks), but they're not doing it after a nice analysis but because they realized they've so absolutely lost yet another console generation.

glimshe 3y ago

I can't believe some people here are criticizing MS. I got a Series X and digital games I had bought almost 20 years ago on the very first iteration of the XBOX Digital Store simply worked with no extra fees. I don't know anyone else delivering this kind of backwards compatibility.

decide1000 3y ago
Why should they charge extra fees? You bought it.
- jsheard 3y ago
  It's contrary to what Sony and Nintendo did, where there was no backwards compatibility from the PS3 to the PS4 or from the Wii U to the Switch, and the games that were manually ported over were re-launched at full price with no discount for those who already bought the original. Microsoft are the only ones who made a significant effort to keep games working across generations with very different hardware architectures and didn't charge for the privilege of playing your existing library.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Games often use licensed third party assets like copyrighted music or various SW libraries for graphics or networking. That copyrighted content is licensed to them for a fixed number of years. After that license period expires, they're no longer allowed to sell the game, unless they negociate again a new license agreement with whoever owns that IP now, which is often too much of a headache, and if they do renew it, it means a new release of the game for extra money to offset the new licensing costs. Emulation works around that since it relies on users who already bought the content from when the license was still in effect, but again, it's and effort from Microsoft to provide the emulation environment which is something the likes of Nintendo and Sony abandoned, since it brings little revenue for the extra costs. It's a lot more complex issue than just "all game devs = evil".

grzeshru 3y ago

Bought an xbone recently for a few titles, all my old Xbox games work. Nothing more to add.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pbj1968 3y ago

I own every generation of Xbox. Multiples of most. I have gotten an incredible deal on each and every one. And the physical and digital games typically go cheap quickly. 20+ years. Not sure what their strategy is but I’ve benefited.

haunter 3y ago
Wish Xbox All Access were available in more countries

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

I don't understand how Microsoft handle's Xbox backwards compatibility on the Series S/X, but under the hood there are clearly stubs to trampoline original expected behaviors to unsupported dialog messages. Some legacy games appear to not support split-screen anymore, as far as I can tell from the store pages of specific Xbox 360-era games. All-in-all, it's a subpar experience that I think will only continue to be disappointing, and the only real solution is to find used hardware and play the games in the manner they were originally designed. Anything off the digital stores will be subject to alteration, sometimes just because they can, it seems.

Kalanos 3y ago

halo 3 online?