Microsoft continues to respond to the gaming communities call for backwards compatibility in the Xbox 360, but questions still remain.

Early on in the development of the 360, Microsoft appears to have questioned the need for backwards compatibility. Analysts tell stories of a “senior Xbox execs” privately saying that backwards compatibility was unimportant. This conclusion was reached by research showing that PS2 owners almost never played PS1 games. While this holds true for the first Playstation editions, Microsoft gamers are in a different position: 1) Many Xbox titles see continued play after years on the market thanks to Xbox Live and Gamespy networking 2) The PS2 has been on the market for many more years than the Xbox 1, thus dating PS1 titles more than Xbox 1 titles.

Since the initial news on the 360 and responses of the community, Microsoft has worked diligently to backwards compatibility to the Xbox 360. The fundamental hardware shifts and advances have not made this easy, but Microsoft is committed to this feature. Recent developments include:

• Finalized emulation of the Intel CPU on the 360
• Developed a dedicated team for engineering and testing compatibility patches for Xbox 1 games
• Licensed (for likely large fee) the rights to emulate the NVIDIA GdForce chipset on the 360’s ATI graphics set
  Confirmed backwards compatibility for a limited number of titles already.

Additional questions that are still being asked by gamers include:

• How many preloaded “emulation profiles” will be available at release and for what titles?
• How will gamers without a high speed connection access new emulation profiles?
• Given the system’s ROM, would someone with a high speed connection but without a hard drive be able to download an emulation profile and play a title? The hard drive requirement for backwards compatibility currently announced may be a worst case scenario.
• What happens if a gamer tries to run a game not approved for backwards compatibility on the Xbox 360?