Way back on May 26th the web site Insideris has posted a rumour that the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system for PCs and tablets will allow users to play Xbox 360 games on their PCs. For some reason this unverified rumour has become ‘news’ in the past twenty four hours, so here are the details.
According to sources, ‘Xbox 360 on PC’ will have a subscription fee similar to – but not – Xbox Live. Gamers will use Windows Live Marketplace and only be able to play against other PC gamers and not those on real 360s due to mouse vs controller imbalances.
Could this service be the ‘relaunch of gaming’ that was promised for Windows 8?
“Windows 8 will represent a real new push into PC gaming,” a source told TechRadar. “Gaming will be a key component for the whole OS.”
Please note that this is a totally unsubstantiated rumour, and an old one at that.
StevenHibs
Windows 7 will do for me =)
Paranoimia
I’m still on Vista and loathe to give MS any more cash for another iteration of a useless operating system.
That said, wouldn’t the ability to play 360 games on PC kind of make the console redundant?
colmshan1990
It would kill the 360 console.
But would it kill a 720? Not a chance.
DJ Judas
So we’ll have hardware powerful enough to run Xbox 720 games……but we’ll only be able to play 360 games?
Seems like just another revenue stream to hark some money from to me rather than a true crossover service.
FluBBa
I will probably play XNA games designed for the XBox360, as those are designed to run on whatever cpu .NET can run on and not specifically designed for the XBox360 cpu.
Youles
I’m a PC and playing Xbox 360 games on Windows 8 was my idea.
Joe
Lol!
Kennykazey
It probably only allows you to see your Xbox-account stats and info on PC. And perhaps some PC games allow you to link them to your account aswell. Do not expect to play Halo Reach or 4 on your PC as the ability to play Xbox games on your PC will seriously affect Microsofts console-sales and such in a negative manner. Plus there’s the whole eDRAM thing that makes playing 360 games a bit tricky…
Bilbo_bobbins
seems completely pointless even if it is true
aphex187
Not all, most people like myself favour the mouse and keyboard over a pad, couple that with better graphics and console only exclusives being brought over to the PC and MS have a sure fire winner on their hands!!!
aphex187
*Not at all oops!
skibadee
if that were true the PC market would be strong which is not the case.
Rocket_345
I can see Microsoft doing this to try and open up the 360 games to more users but this would just make having a 360 entirely redunant so it is completely pointless.
KeRaSh
Well there are those with a 360 and a slow PC and then there are those with a fast PC and no 360. :D
beeje13
Perfectly put.
TSBonyman
Isn’t there a dnager this would reduce their console sales?
teflon
HAHAHA! Oh seriously? That’s a good wheeze…
Here’s why this won’t happen, and it’s a story from OSX. When Apple made the switch from PowerPC CPUs to x86 and Intel, they had to create a quick layer called Rosetta Stone that was able to translate on the fly from PPC to x86.
This was possible because the main difference was an endian one (effectively re-ordering the sequence of processing), but when there was endian specific, and targeted code, things would fall apart. Games in particular suffered quite heavily, you would quickly lose a good chunk of performance, and some simply wouldn’t run at all.
Now consider the situation here, windows PCs come in all shapes and sizes whilst the 360 comes in 1. You’re going to need one heck of a machine to be able to run a translation layer from PPC (360) to x86 and get the locked frame rates that the 360 enjoys. Luckily with OSX, intel CPUs were much quicker than most PPC ones available anyway, so it was fine for most things.
Then factor in all the little quirks of coding. The distribution of load over the various cores and the GPU, and you’d at the very best require a per-game layer, as we saw from Xbox 1 to 360 emulation.
Lastly, you’d absolutely need an X360 controller to play all these games, as mouse input is not possible…
etc. etc. etc.
In other words, nice try whoever came up with this particular dream, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
aphex187
What i have just said is pointless then haha!! Cheers for this teflon ;)
teflon
Oh, last quick point. If it was easy to do this kind of thing, then wouldn’t we already have a 360 emulator?
If it was so easy, wouldn’t the 360 have the total ability to play all xbox games, whereas currently it’s merely a good proportion.
If it was easy, wouldn’t the PS3 have PS2 playback?
No, these things are damned hard to get exactly right, especially when your hardware isn’t 10 years down the line. We’re only just seeing 6th generation console emulators reaching some sort of maturity and ability, and computers these days are probably 100x as powerful.
KeRaSh
If there is someone out there that has the ability to code an emulator for Windows that is capable of playing back 360 games in a playable manner it must surely be the developer of said console… Oh wait… What? ;)
Don’t be so pessimistic. You can already buy the 360 controller for your PC. :P
kill_zide
If this is true then its official the xbox doesn’t have any exlusives anymore lol
rossthebassist
whilst i agree with allot of points raised by teflon i dont think the idea is that far out there, for starters this is microsoft we are talking about, software is what they do.
its still marked as rumor so i wouldnt get to agro about it all. but if it was possible its an intresting concept. i just personally dont see how it benifits the xbox community as a whole rather than trying to kill off the platform. the reason people choose console over PC gaming is quite obvious, so why would you want to detract from your main gaming audiance.
Unless they mean market place games and arcade titles creating a xbox version of steam for PC?