Seeing your question, my immediate thought was "that's an odd question, of course it has backwards compatibility". Turns out that it actually doesn't.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350662/new-xbox-has-no-ba...
That's incredible.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350662/new-xbox-has-no-ba...
That's incredible.
> Technologically speaking, it's not wholly a surprise that backwards compatibility is off the table. Today, the company confirmed months of rumors that the new Xbox would use an x86 CPU. Games designed for the Xbox 360's Xenon processor simply won't run natively on the new hardware, since the Xenon used a PowerPC architecture instead.
IIRC, Microsoft allowed/encouraged publishers to re-compile, and release a patch via XBL which let people play the original games on the new system.
It seems like this would be an ideal opportunity for the QuickTransit [2] stuff Apple used in Rosetta to see some more use, assuming IBM would be willing to license it (and MS sees it as a worthwhile endeavour).
[1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_w... [2] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit
I am surprised that Microsoft would throw the lead their 360 has amassed.
I don't want to juggle multiple systems in the entertainment setup. If I switch to either a PS4 or a Xbox One, either leaves me out in the cold with my old "investment". So any advantage the One had in that regard is gone. It isn't a huge deal at all, but is factored in or not.
At some point I stepped back and questioned where this expectation came from, and I have to guess it's based on those of us who started as PC gamers and then went to consoles: Who else would expect something from one system to magically work on another? As more and more people grow up without this preconception, I'd imagine fewer and fewer will balk at a lack of backwards compatibility.
Seems to be a lot of marketing hoping my kid will stop watching youtube and playing minecraft on his android tablet and move to their console. This might be a problem as people are not so cool with rebuying everything if you upgrade from one iphone to the next or one android phone/tablet to the next.
The problem with the xbox one is next (whatever) GOOG and APPL release the next generation of tablets with a HDMI out. Now what? Pay 99 cents at play.google.com or $70 for a xbox game? Pay $200 oh wait you already own a nexus 7 of course so its actually $0, or pay $400 for a new xbox?