When the other members of the board and myself sit in our wonderfully expensive board room sipping lattes, sometimes a bad decision comes out. We rarely ever actually admit to it being a bad decision, but we do know it was bad to begin with. I imagine the same thing happened with Microsoft, when they made the decision to not include backward compatibility by default in the Xbox 360, their new flagship game console which should be arriving in stores shortly:

Microsoft has posted a list of 212 Xbox games that are backward-compatible with the Xbox 360 – but only next-generation consoles with a hard drive.

The list, which you can view here, contains all the best-known Xbox titles. Games not present on the list will not run on the 360.
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Unlike other console makers, Microsoft has chosen to implement backward compatibility in software. The downloadable app converts Intel x86 processor instructions from the original Xbox into their PowerPC equivalents, in the process compensating for the different ways the two CPU types store numbers larger than 255.

Microsoft said the emulation software would be made available to Xbox Live subscribers, from the Xbox.com website – as a downloadable disk image to burn to CD – or direct from Microsoft on CD. Presumably it’s then installed on the 360’s hard drive, though the website doesn’t make this clear.

That leaves anyone who buys the cheaper Xbox 360 Core System out in the cold – it doesn’t ship with the 20GB HDD that’s part of the standard package.

If you don’t buy the higher-end Xbox 360 package that ships with a hard disk, you’re out of luck, folks. Someone at Microsoft has obviously determined that most people who are going to buy an Xbox 360 (many of whom are probably Xbox owners) won’t mind either leaving their entire game collection behind or keeping both units hooked up. Smart move, Microsoft.

The Register rightly points out that Sony’s PlayStation 2 was a very attractive console because it could play older games without any special tweaking. Apparently obvious history tends to get lost on some of these fine-suited individuals. Advice to Sony: Don’t make this mistake when the PS3 releases. If it takes a little longer, so be it. While Microsoft crammed the Xbox 360 out the door in time for Christmas, learn from that big mistake.

You also have to wonder how much Microsoft’s typical strategy of “get it out now, patch it later” is going to sit with console gamers. We already know that PC users don’t like it very much. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Source: The Register

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