Xbox Games with Xbox2
- Thread starter cdeener
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XboxMaster
CAGiversary!
My inside (my uncle's wife's friend) sources tell me that the next Xbox will be backwards compatible. He also told me that the next Xbox will send a fatal shock to whomever uses standby on the next Halo...which has also been confirmed by my source.
[quote name='XboxMaster']My inside (my uncle's wife's friend) sources tell me that the next Xbox will be backwards compatible. He also told me that the next Xbox will send a fatal shock to whomever uses standby on the next Halo...which has also been confirmed by my source.[/quote]
Your uncle's wife's friend also forgot to tell you that the Next Box has been programmed to detect other consoles within a 10 mile radius and then send out a surge of electricity to short circuit them.
Your uncle's wife's friend also forgot to tell you that the Next Box has been programmed to detect other consoles within a 10 mile radius and then send out a surge of electricity to short circuit them.
XboxMaster
CAGiversary!
[quote name='dcfox'][quote name='XboxMaster']My inside (my uncle's wife's friend) sources tell me that the next Xbox will be backwards compatible. He also told me that the next Xbox will send a fatal shock to whomever uses standby on the next Halo...which has also been confirmed by my source.[/quote]
Your uncle's wife's friend also forgot to tell you that the Next Box has been programmed to detect other consoles within a 10 mile radius and then send out a surge of electricity to short circuit them.[/quote]
He DID tell me that...Hey! Are you my uncle's wife's friend's neice's friend's older sister's boyfriend my uncle's wife's friend was talking about?
Your uncle's wife's friend also forgot to tell you that the Next Box has been programmed to detect other consoles within a 10 mile radius and then send out a surge of electricity to short circuit them.[/quote]
He DID tell me that...Hey! Are you my uncle's wife's friend's neice's friend's older sister's boyfriend my uncle's wife's friend was talking about?
manofpeace20
Banned
The only way I will consider buying the XBOX 2 on launch is if it is backwards compatible. That way, I could trade in my Halo XBOX in late August so I can still get decent value, and put a big chunk into my XBOX 2 payment. If not, I'm perfectly content waiting 2 years.
[quote name='manofpeace20']The only way I will consider buying the XBOX 2 on launch is if it is backwards compatible. That way, I could trade in my Halo XBOX in late August so I can still get decent value, and put a big chunk into my XBOX 2 payment. If not, I'm perfectly content waiting 2 years.[/quote]
That is exactly why Microsoft should make Xbox 1 games compatible with the next one otherwise I will just wait until they drop the price to like 200 bucks.
That is exactly why Microsoft should make Xbox 1 games compatible with the next one otherwise I will just wait until they drop the price to like 200 bucks.
Legolas813
CAGiversary!
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I really don't feel like paying for the proposed $60-$70+ MSRP for next-generation games.
Stryffe2004
CAGiversary!
It won't be backwards compatible. MS will still want to move new XBOX hardware and will likely reduce the price to $99 when Xenon launches. People with XBOXes already may want to upgrade to Xenon, while people with out XBOXes may look at $99 as a great time to buy one. Development for XBOX game sis likely to continue for a while, so MS can really get over by having two consoles on the market like Sony did with the PS1 and PS2 for the first few years.
[quote name='int80h']From what I hear:
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.
[quote name='Stryffe2004']It won't be backwards compatible. MS will still want to move new XBOX hardware and will likely reduce the price to $99 when Xenon launches. People with XBOXes already may want to upgrade to Xenon, while people with out XBOXes may look at $99 as a great time to buy one. Development for XBOX game sis likely to continue for a while, so MS can really get over by having two consoles on the market like Sony did with the PS1 and PS2 for the first few years.[/quote]
Don't be silly. Sony has sold millions of the PSone since the PS2 launch despite the PS2 being able to run all of the software for both systems.
There are serious issues preventing Microsoft from doing what is needed to greatly reduce the cost of manufacturing the Xbox. One of these is the same obstacle to backwards compatibility: Nvidia's IP licensing cost. If Microsoft is able to pull off a 'black box' emulator to provide backward compatibility without Nvidia's cooperation, I believe it highly likely they'd want to discontinue the current Xbox the moment sales dropped below a certain threshold. Unlike Sony, they have few options for reducing the cost of making the machine any further. They cannot do a die shrink without Nvidia and without that nothing else matters. Without being able to offer a major retail price drop it will be easier to convince people they should instead buy the new system if it supports the old machine's library.
Don't be silly. Sony has sold millions of the PSone since the PS2 launch despite the PS2 being able to run all of the software for both systems.
There are serious issues preventing Microsoft from doing what is needed to greatly reduce the cost of manufacturing the Xbox. One of these is the same obstacle to backwards compatibility: Nvidia's IP licensing cost. If Microsoft is able to pull off a 'black box' emulator to provide backward compatibility without Nvidia's cooperation, I believe it highly likely they'd want to discontinue the current Xbox the moment sales dropped below a certain threshold. Unlike Sony, they have few options for reducing the cost of making the machine any further. They cannot do a die shrink without Nvidia and without that nothing else matters. Without being able to offer a major retail price drop it will be easier to convince people they should instead buy the new system if it supports the old machine's library.
[quote name='cdeener']I want to know if this is going to happen but will they do like Sony and make the Xbox 2 compatiable with Xbox games? I hope they do because it would suck to have to buy a lot of games for a new system that will probably range from $50-$60.[/quote]
Why would you even buy an xbox2 if you don't plan on buying any games for it?
Why would you even buy an xbox2 if you don't plan on buying any games for it?
[quote name='epobirs'][quote name='cdeener']Hey Microsoft is learning from what made Sony so popular. Remember the PS2 plays PS1 games too.[/quote]
Yep, because backward compatibility was a critical contributor to the PS1 becoming the leading system of its generation.[/quote]
Lord knows I still break out my ps0 from time to time.
Yep, because backward compatibility was a critical contributor to the PS1 becoming the leading system of its generation.[/quote]
Lord knows I still break out my ps0 from time to time.
[quote name='epobirs'][quote name='int80h']From what I hear:
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.[/quote]
Could you please explain what the terms "big-endian/little-endian conversion" mean? I recognize the reference to Jonathan Swift, but I fail to see how the term applies to hardware emulation.
(I am honestly curious, I don't have any knowledge of hardware emulation, despite my programming and electronics background.)
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.[/quote]
Could you please explain what the terms "big-endian/little-endian conversion" mean? I recognize the reference to Jonathan Swift, but I fail to see how the term applies to hardware emulation.
(I am honestly curious, I don't have any knowledge of hardware emulation, despite my programming and electronics background.)
[quote name='fanskad'][quote name='epobirs'][quote name='int80h']From what I hear:
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.[/quote]
Could you please explain what the terms "big-endian/little-endian conversion" mean? I recognize the reference to Jonathan Swift, but I fail to see how the term applies to hardware emulation.
(I am honestly curious, I don't have any knowledge of hardware emulation, despite my programming and electronics background.)[/quote]
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/big_endian.html
It refers to how processors expect numbers to be depicted in data.
If you are trying to perform emulation on a system that handles numbers the opposite than the system being emulated you need to translate every single number. This makes for a horrific amount of labor that could slow things down tot he point of making the result unviable.
The linked article is wrong about one thing. PPC is not natively bi-endian. Motorola, who made the PPC match the way the M680x0 series did things so that the Power Macs would have an easy time running under emulation code written for the earlier Macs, put ina hardware function to do the conversion much, much faster than it could be done in software. This was almost exclusively for the purpose of running x86 emulators. It was useful for some development tasks but it would never have been included if emulation weren't of interest to Apple's customers.
When IBM did the 970 series they didn't include this function. The problem was that Virtual PC had long since been written to assume it was there and wouldn't run on G5 Macs. Even a quick patch to Virtual PC to use the code written for the earliest PPCs that did it by hand only served to show what a major cycle hog the job was. It ran slower than it would on a four year old G3. Virtual PC has since been rewritten from the ground up to make the best use of the G5 but the performance isn't what it could have been if IBM and Apple hadn't arrogantly tried to blow off Mac users running PC apps.
1. MS isn't going to be able to license nVidia's proprietary Xbox 1 tech for Xbox 2.
2. Emulating x86 on PowerPC-64 is not fast enough for games.[/quote]
1. Correct
2. Dead wrong. This has been done on the Mac for many years already. The real question is which PPC emulating which X86? A 733 MHz P-III is not a speed demon by todays measure. If PPC used in the Xbox2 has hardware support for big-endian/little-endian conversion the single biggest obstacle is reduced to a small fraction of the worklload that would otherwise exist.
In the past Virtual PC has sucked for playing PC games not due to low CPU performance but rather because much of the elements needed for modern games aren't supported. Virtual PC until recently did everything on a generic low-end video card that could be easily mapped to anything that appeared in Macs. Fine for running business apps but if the your Mac had the latest Nvidia or ATI card it wouldn't matter. As far as DirectX in the Virtual PC was concerned the video support was minimal.
This is a much simpler thing on consoles. The host machine is a static platform and so is the emulation target. Since everything is completely predictable in that regard there is no limit to the fine tuning and mapping to host hardware that can be done.
On the technical side it's completely doable. The obstacles are entirely legal and financial.[/quote]
Could you please explain what the terms "big-endian/little-endian conversion" mean? I recognize the reference to Jonathan Swift, but I fail to see how the term applies to hardware emulation.
(I am honestly curious, I don't have any knowledge of hardware emulation, despite my programming and electronics background.)[/quote]
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/big_endian.html
It refers to how processors expect numbers to be depicted in data.
If you are trying to perform emulation on a system that handles numbers the opposite than the system being emulated you need to translate every single number. This makes for a horrific amount of labor that could slow things down tot he point of making the result unviable.
The linked article is wrong about one thing. PPC is not natively bi-endian. Motorola, who made the PPC match the way the M680x0 series did things so that the Power Macs would have an easy time running under emulation code written for the earlier Macs, put ina hardware function to do the conversion much, much faster than it could be done in software. This was almost exclusively for the purpose of running x86 emulators. It was useful for some development tasks but it would never have been included if emulation weren't of interest to Apple's customers.
When IBM did the 970 series they didn't include this function. The problem was that Virtual PC had long since been written to assume it was there and wouldn't run on G5 Macs. Even a quick patch to Virtual PC to use the code written for the earliest PPCs that did it by hand only served to show what a major cycle hog the job was. It ran slower than it would on a four year old G3. Virtual PC has since been rewritten from the ground up to make the best use of the G5 but the performance isn't what it could have been if IBM and Apple hadn't arrogantly tried to blow off Mac users running PC apps.
I own all three systems, but xbox is my favorite and I am really looking forward to Xenon. However, I would take a long hard look at buying the Xenon at launch w/o backward compatability. It would be a big selling point to me, and it would really make me question buying the sytems if it had no backward compatability or a harddrive, which is my favorite feature of the xbox. I don't think Xenon is going to succeed w/o backward compatability, poeple all ways want mroe games, and that woudl seriously hurt that.
bread's done