And before anyone argues about emulation ability/speeds, don’t forget that “emulation” of the original Xbox on the Xbox 360 involved downloading a completely new executable recompiled for PPC and wasn’t 100% emulation per se.
“On a technical level, the Xbox One can’t play 360 games because of its processor. The new x86 CPU can’t natively run games made for the 360’s Xenon processor, which used PowerPC architecture”
This is, of course, why the (PowerPC) 360 didn’t have any backwards compatibility with the original (x86) Xbox…oh wait.
I’m not saying its easy emulating a triple core CPU of a different architecture but can we stop pretending emulation of an 8 year old CPU of a different architecture is impossible when the 360 did it with a 4 year old CPU?
“According to him, only 5 percent of customers actually played older games on a new console”
The problem with this is that they have chosen a single number to represent a figure that changes over the life of the console. You’d expect the percentage to be higher at a consoles inception. So at which point of time is it? Is it an average? Over 1 year or 3 or 8?
The other issue is, of course, that its historical data referring to a completely different console in a completely different time.
The 360 had double the lifespan of the original with a huge game library. It had a much bigger emphasis on online play. It lives in a gaming landscape full of DLC, achievements, etc. Its popularity train left long ago, but how many Rock Band users are there with extensive DLC collections that are now relegated to an old console?
Thanks to backwards compatibility, Halo 2 was the most popular game on Xbox live years after the 360 was released.
The other issue is that the leap the 360 provided over the original is much larger than the XB1’s. “Slumming it” in the land of backwards compatibility these days still involves HD, widescreen, matchmaking, achievements etc. It’s a bit different than 360 owners not wanting to play a standard definition game in 4:3.
Can you imagine if Bluray players weren’t compatible with DVDs because of some BS historical data about DVD owners not wanting to watch VHS anymore?
Personally I’m not too fussed about backwards compatibility, and I understand its a lot of money to invest in looking backwards, but these sort of moronic sound byte replies are just disingenuous. MS has no accurate data on how many users would use backwards compatibility - but the outrage online might indicate its a little higher than they’re claiming.
