360 Live and backwards compatability updates

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2006-05-29 04:17pm

I'm planning on getting a 360 soon, but I have no intent on getting a paid subscription to Live. Since I have a lot of Xbox games, I'm wondering if the free Live account that comes with them allows you to download the updates to let you play games that aren't initially supported. Does anyone know?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-29 04:37pm

Yes. The subscription to Xbox Live is just to access the game matching servers. You can still get updates and use the marketplace functions for game content, trailers, and demos without it.

You can actually download the compatibility updates on a PC and burn them to CD, if you don't have an internet connection for the Xbox.

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2006-05-29 04:45pm

Good to know, thanks

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2006-05-29 04:48pm

you can go to the website download the drivers onto a blank cd and put them into the XBOX 360. not all games are suported. a link is here or PM me for more info another more info ok

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2006-05-29 05:04pm

WTF is taking them so long to get Soul Calibur II working on the 360?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-29 05:22pm

Largely what's keeping them is that pretty much every game needs seperate routines to be added to the emulator. Since that means a lot of work, games are prioritised by the ease of getting them working, not just their popularity.

Soul Calibur II might be one of the difficult ones.

Neko_Oni · Post by **Neko_Oni** » 2006-05-31 12:51am

Just so you know 360 backwards compatability isn't very reliable either. I have an Australian 360, and I get things like the 360 rejecting my Halo2 disc ("disc is corrupted or some shit",

which it isn't it works fine in my Xbox), Ninja Gaiden with no sound and running like treacle, so I'd say hang on to your Xbox.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2006-05-31 11:36am

Why the fuck is compatability such a bitch on the "It's just a PC in an ugly box!" console, anyway?

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2006-05-31 11:41am

LordShaithis wrote:Why the fuck is compatability such a bitch on the "It's just a PC in an ugly box!" console, anyway?

Backwards compatibility relies on the hardware being the same, since thats what the old games were coded for. With the PS1 > PS2 Sony got round the problem by sticking a PS1 CPU as the PS2's IOP controller. If you don't have the same hardware, then you emulate.
With the 360 the hwardware has changed radically, so every game needs to be emulated. Anyone whos emulated a console on a PC knows what a bitch compatibilty can be when emulating. This is why so few consoles do backwards compatibility.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-05-31 12:49pm

LordShaithis wrote:Why the fuck is compatability such a bitch on the "It's just a PC in an ugly box!" console, anyway?

Sharp-kun explained it pretty well, but I'm going to elaborate just a tad more.

How backwards compatability has worked through history:
The reason the GameBoy Color can run GameBoy games is that the GameBoy Color's hardware was a faster version of the GameBoy's. Both used a Z80 processor.

The reason the GameBoy Advance could run GameBoy games is that it also included the GameBoy Color's Z80 processor, and most of the rest of the hardware was similar.

The reason the DS can run GameBoy Advance games but not GameBoy Color games is that the DS has a GameBoy Advance processor (running at twice the clock speed) as a secondary processor for running the second screen. It lacks the Z80 processor. Nintendo missed the fact that the DS is powerful enough to emulate the GameBoy Color (something homebrew writers have managed to do, actually).

The reason the PS2 can run PS1 games is that it had a PS1 CPU in it.

Well, the XBox 360 switched to a completely different architecture. The processors aren't remotely similar, so you can't make them work together like how the DS and PS2 use their classic processors for side work (IOP on PS2 and second screen on DS). Further, they're using a completely different graphics card as well, causing even more problems. And to make things worse, they're using three slower processors instead of one fast one, and all XBox code is single threaded, so the 360 could only use one of its processors to emulate the XBox's because XBox games are unable to use more than one CPU.

So the only solution is to patch XBox games to make them work with the 360.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-31 01:07pm

Nintendo missed the fact that the DS is powerful enough to emulate the GameBoy Color (something homebrew writers have managed to do, actually).

I think they deliberately ignored it. The DS wasn't supposed to replace the GBA, remember ? There's no point in making your second line of handhelds backwards compatible with the predecessor of the "main" line.

Plus, would you really have wanted to wait until Nintendo got the software emulation running perfectly ? Knowing them, they wouldn't ship a single DS until 99% of the titles was running perfectly. It'd have been a loooong wait.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-31 01:25pm

Come to think of it, has Nintendo *ever* done software emulation on a commercial product ? The only game I recall that didn't run on it's original processor was Pokémon in all it's flavours on the N64 through the transfer pak and Stadium. Or did the TP itself have a Z80 ?

DaveJB · Post by **DaveJB** » 2006-05-31 01:52pm

I think that Stadium had copies of the first four GB Pokemon games (Green, Red, Blue and Yellow) on the N64 cartridge, and that all the transfer pack pulled from the GB cart was the saved game and a few snippets of boot code to make the emulation work (and act as a copy-protection system). The N64's processor was good enough that it could emulate the GB with ease.

Also, the GameCube versions of Zelda: Ocarina of Time worked by emulating an N64 on the GameCube hardware, and the NES version of Metroid included in Zero Mission and Prime is also emulated.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-31 01:57pm

Also, the GameCube versions of Zelda: Ocarina of Time worked by emulating an N64 on the GameCube hardware, and the NES version of Metroid included in Zero Mission and Prime is also emulated.

I stand corrected, then.

Still, those are only single games. They never tried running a whole library through software.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-05-31 02:06pm

IIRC the entire NES Classics game lineup on the GBA is emulated. I may be wrong though, but I think that's correct (NES emulators run well on the GBA, SNES emulators even run, though with horrible compatability).

ome to think of it, has Nintendo *ever* done software emulation on a commercial product ?

Well...the Wii will have it. Lots of it. I got to try Mario 64 running in an emulator on the Wii, and it was niiiiiice. Progressive scan, 60 FPS.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-05-31 02:14pm

I got to try Mario 64 running in an emulator on the Wii, and it was niiiiiice. Progressive scan, 60 FPS.

Wait, 60 ? So they're upgrading the games ?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-31 02:41pm

Presumably the console will just chuck out whatever you've told it to at the dashboard, the same as the Xbox 360 does, (though the 360 obviously also has HD resolutions and forces AA on all titles).

I have an Australian 360, and I get things like the 360 rejecting my Halo2 disc ("disc is corrupted or some shit", which it isn't it works fine in my Xbox), Ninja Gaiden with no sound and running like treacle, so I'd say hang on to your Xbox.

Mine (also a PAL unit) works fine on both titles. Ninja Gaiden had a couple of areas where it would snarl for a second or so, but I've got both Gaiden and NG Black and I've played NG Black pretty much to death with no problems.

I know Ninja Gaiden 1-3 don't work on NG, but NG Arcade works on Black.

The game that's given me the most frame problems is Knights of the Old Republic, which is hardly a demanding game next to Jade Empire, which ran perfectly start to finish. But then my KotOR disc is a bit fucked.

Neko_Oni · Post by **Neko_Oni** » 2006-05-31 09:52pm

Vendetta wrote:Mine (also a PAL unit) works fine on both titles. Ninja Gaiden had a couple of areas where it would snarl for a second or so, but I've got both Gaiden and NG Black and I've played NG Black pretty much to death with no problems.

I know Ninja Gaiden 1-3 don't work on NG, but NG Arcade works on Black.

At least you get NG:B, it apparently didn't get released over here.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-06-01 12:15pm

Truth be told it's not much different, it just has the Hurricane Pack content streamed in, so that you can play with the staff on normal difficulty (fun, makes short work of pesky black spider ninjas), and it changes to the full Hurricane Pack if you set it to Hard. (and the scarab rewards are slightly different).

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-06-01 12:31pm

Bounty wrote:
I got to try Mario 64 running in an emulator on the Wii, and it was niiiiiice. Progressive scan, 60 FPS.
Wait, 60 ? So they're upgrading the games ?

The Nintendo rep on the show floor explained to me that the Wii emulates classic machines faster than the originals, eliminating all lag games might have and making them look really nice. Remember how sometimes if you were running fast enough in Sonic the Genesis would struggle to keep up? That doesn't happen now.

Has anyone confirmed that the XBox 360 is actually using emulation? Despite the fact that everyone keeps calling it an emulator, everything I read gives me the distinct impression that they're patching games to run on the 360. Mainly, the fact that you have to download an individual "emulation profile" for each game. Emulators emulate hardware; why would you need one for each game? I get the impression that they're building on the fact that the public knows what an 'emulator' is, but I'm not sure that they're actually using emulation.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-06-01 01:04pm

The Xbox dev team say it's emulation.

I'm betting that the reason that games require seperate emulation is that the Xbox GPU is a highly programmable piece of kit, and so different developers may have chosen different and non-standard ways of using it, and the old GPU routines have to be individually interpreted in order to make them work on the new one.

Making a PowerPC pretend to be an x86 is simple enough, Microsoft bought Connectix years ago, and they are used to that, it's making an ATi chip pretend to be an nVidia one that will be different..

The Wii, by contrast, is emulating systems at a favourable level of advancement. Emulation is easiest when you have a couple of orders of magnitude extra processing power to throw at the problem.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-06-01 01:09pm

The Nintendo rep on the show floor explained to me that the Wii emulates classic machines faster than the originals, eliminating all lag games might have and making them look really nice.

I don't get it.

I mean, I can understand why the games wouldn't have lag, but M64 was coded to run at 30fps. Is it that easy to double the framerate ? They can't just make the game run at 200% speed, those extra frames have got to be drawn somehow. I thought it'd be a lot more difficult.

Yogi · Post by **Yogi** » 2006-06-01 01:19pm

They could be making slight changes to the code as well. What you download from Nintendo might not be an exact copy of the original ROM.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-06-01 01:32pm

Bounty wrote:
The Nintendo rep on the show floor explained to me that the Wii emulates classic machines faster than the originals, eliminating all lag games might have and making them look really nice.
I don't get it.

I mean, I can understand why the games wouldn't have lag, but M64 was coded to run at 30fps. Is it that easy to double the framerate ? They can't just make the game run at 200% speed, those extra frames have got to be drawn somehow. I thought it'd be a lot more difficult.

Maybe I'm incorrect then, but I thought it was 60 FPS. It looked silky smooth. I'm not sure if the Nintendo rep specificly said 60 or not though.

There could possibly be slight changes to the rendering code, too. Possibly.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-06-01 01:33pm

Vendetta wrote:The Xbox dev team say it's emulation.

I'm betting that the reason that games require seperate emulation is that the Xbox GPU is a highly programmable piece of kit, and so different developers may have chosen different and non-standard ways of using it, and the old GPU routines have to be individually interpreted in order to make them work on the new one.

Making a PowerPC pretend to be an x86 is simple enough, Microsoft bought Connectix years ago, and they are used to that, it's making an ATi chip pretend to be an nVidia one that will be different..

The Wii, by contrast, is emulating systems at a favourable level of advancement. Emulation is easiest when you have a couple of orders of magnitude extra processing power to throw at the problem.

Not that easy on the PowerPC side when your PowerPC processor is tri-core (can't use all three to run single threaded code, right?), and can't do out-of-order execution.

But that makes sense, I guess.