Peter Moore may have said more than he should have in comments made yesterday to Kikizo by pontificating, “Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility… let’s move on, or people aren’t as worried about a game being backwards compatible – and I like to think we’ve upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compat[ible]."
It seems that 360 owners, contrary to Moore,s statements, are still concerned about backwards compatibility. And those that voiced this opinion originated not only from the gaming community, but from within the very halls of Microsoft. In a recent posts on gamerscoreboard.com, which describes itself as, “The inside scoop from Microsoft Xbox and Games Employees,” one poster said:
“I’m the biggest Xbox and Xbox 360 fan ever, and I check out a plethora of Xbox related sites and forums every day. I think backwards compatibility is very important, and based on polls on teamxbox shows that more than 50% on those forums are interested in backwards compatibility. Peter should really watch what he says on the subject, because when he says ‘Nobody is concerned about backwards compatibility, then he doesn’t know his users.”
Another individual said adamantly, “I can tell you right now that I’m going to be a very unhappy camper if I never get a chance to play Psychonauts, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Capcom’s outstanding fighters on my Xbox 360. The Wii’s going to have FULL backward compatibility. The PS3 will have it, too. So what’s the deal?
“More and more, it’s starting to seem like Xbox 360 owners are getting the short end of the stick. No motion-sensitive controllers. Precious few games available in the Xbox Live Arcade. A high-capacity hard drive that’s sold seperately from the main unit. And no genuine backward compatibility. I feel like I’ve paid four hundred dollars for a system that Microsoft didn’t finish.”
But the official word came from reports given by the BC (backwards compatability) team: “Lots of talk about backwards compatibility online today. We wanted to get to the bottom of it all, so we went right to the team working on the next back compat update. We hear directly from them that they’re in the testing phase of another update, and it should be out in the next few weeks. We saw the list they’re testing, and it looks like they’re hoping to add at least a dozen titles.
“Long before the launch, we thought we might hit a few dozen titles, and we all feel pretty good about the list of well over 200 titles on the back compat list today, including many of the games that you,ve asked for. You all have heard us say the work isn’t simple. Many games did unique things to take advantage of the processing power of the Xbox, and that makes it difficult to emulate, especially when we then have to make new code work with existing (and future) compatible titles.
“But rest assured, we’re not done yet.
“We know for a fact that there are lots of people who continue to care about backwards compatibility, including the "Emulation Ninjas" who are working full time on the updates. And those of us posting on this blog. And, of course, many of you.
“Stay tuned for more information about the upcoming update…”
So at least for the time being, the BC titles will be continued to be cranked out by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The question remains–how much longer will the Big M continue in its support of BC games?
