As the Xbox 360 release date has approached, everyone continues to ask if their games from the original Xbox will play on their new 360. We can tell you that more than 200 games have already been tested for backward compatibility on the 360, and Microsoft continues to add others.

Here are the most frequent questions:

Why are will all original Xbox games not play on the 360?
The architecture (i.e. hardware components) of the 360 are drastically different than the original Xbox. To allow games to play on the new system, an emulator must actually be created (or tweaked) to account for the differences.

Are their benefits to playing Xbox games on the 360?
Yes. Every original Xbox game will be playable in high definition. The 360 has the ability to upscale the games to 720p and 1080i.

Is a hard drive needed for backward compatibility?
Yes. It does not matter if a hard drive came bundled with your 360 or if you purchased it at a later date, but one must be present for backward compatibility.

What games from the original Xbox will play on the Xbox 360?

In-game advertising firm double fusion Monday announced it had hired Geoff Graber, the former general manager of Yahoo! Games, as its CEO. The company, which intends to soon move its headquarters to New York City from Jerusalem, also announced that it had closed a $10 million financing round led by Accel Partners and Jerusalem Venture […]

In this month’s Official Xbox Magazine, places one of the first targets for sales volumes for the Xbox 360. At a recent gathering of industry analysts after presenting Microsoft’s financials, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell told the group that the company hopes to have 4.5 to 5.5 million consoles on the market by the middle of next year worldwide.

Liddell again reiterated a warning that launch volumes may be low but that the company was focusing on maintaining a steady flow of the console into retail lines.

A new report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers expects an accelerating growth in the global entertainment and media industries that will propel the sales from $1.3 trillion in 2004 to $1.8 trillion in 2009 (average growth of 7.3%). Of this, the global video game market will reach $55 billion in total software revenues by 2009, with the U.S. video game market making up $15.1 billion of this amount.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that will ban the sale of any video game to those under 18 that “depict serious injury to human beings in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious or cruel”. This bill is similar to other laws recently passed in Michigan and Illinois. It is also similar to laws being challenged and already defeated.

Lawmakers believe laws of this nature will protect children from experiencing the “interactive nature of video game violence”. They point to studies that link violence in video games to violence and hostile actions in teenagers and preteens. There are numerous independent studies dispelling this connection as being no stronger than other forms of entertainment/media and even the positive effects of video games.

Midway Games, based in Chicago, will acquire The Pitbull Syndicate, based in Newcastle for 199,385 shares of Midway (roughly $3.1 million based on current share price) to Pitbull owners.
In addition, Midway has agreed to provide 25,146 in additional shares to key employees as retention incentives. Pitbull employees who will receive retention incentives […]

Autodesk, creator of 3D Studio Max, has announced that it will acquire Alias, creator of the competing 3D tool Maya for $182 million in cash.

While most game retailers are offering Xbox 360 Bundles, most of these are random assortments that tend to be more focused on increasing sales than satisfying gamers.
Enter Costco. Costco has announced (edit: link to Google Cache of page, as Costco has removed the page) a Xbox 360 bundle that will sell for $479.99 (for […]

Piper Jaffray analyst Anthony Gikas and associate Stephanie Wissink have just released their latest overview of the gaming industry for investors, which shows the Xbox 360 leading the next-gen console war through at least 2008.
The report projects that the Xbox 360 will lead console sales with 19.6 million units sold through the end of 2008, […]

Tim Chen, chief executive for Microsoft in China, told a group at a business forum in Shanghai that Microsoft hope to launch the Xbox 360 in China in 2006.

Microsoft has planned rollout to target the three largest gaming regions at the end of this year, with launches in North America on November 22nd, Europe on December 2nd and Japan on December 10th. This announcement adds mainland China to the list of countries expecting the 360 in 2006, which includes, Australia, Colombia, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

The Korean Association of Game Operators (KAGO) has been created to create standards in the services offered by game operators. KAGO was formed by a group of Korean online game publishers, the Korean Ministry of Information and Communications and the Korea IT Information Promotion Agency.
This new effort formalizes much of the work of the […]

This is high from the rumor stack, but we knew you would want to hear it.

Best Buy began taking pre-orders for Halo 3 today for $59.99 and sets the launch date for May 15th, 2006. Microsoft will not confirm this date, and previous comments from Microsoft on Halo 3’s release placed it on the date of the PS3 launch. In addition, recent rumors on Halo 3 have placed the games release closer to the of the Halo movie.

Did Best Buy jump the gun and release the product page, as we have all seen retailers do in the past? We will have to wait and see. If this May 2006 date holds true for the release, perhaps gamers will see a fourth version released to coincide with the movie.

Guild Wars, known for challenging the typical MMORPG models, announced it has reached 1 million players in only 5 months.
While most MMORPG titles charge users a monthly subscription to play and access new content, Guild Was sells for $39.99 to $49.99 with no monthly maintainence fee – more inline with standard game sales. […]

When Nintendo first released its new controller for the Revolution, it caught nearly everyone by surprise. It is different, and that is the point. Now, we have all had a little more time to digest the remote control look of this modular controller. What does the industry think?
The primary topics around the […]

A new report from Screen Digest predicts that digital distribution (in the “Western World”) will reach $400 million by 2010. While this figure is relatively small compared to the billions of total software sales for the game industry, digital distribution has grown to a size where publishers must take this sales channel very […]