The lack of backwards compatibility has been quite contentious on occasion, with neither the PlayStation 4 nor Xbox One able to play PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 games at launch. But behind closed doors, it seems that Microsoft have been investigating the possibility of adding this capability to their latest console.
Kotaku picked up on a little tidbit from Microsoft’s Build conference last week, where Frank Savage, development lead, was asked if there were any plans for 360 emulation on the Xbox One:
There are, but we’re not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately. It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the x86 stuff. So there’s nothing to announce, but I would love to see it myself.
While this seemingly suggests they are looking into a local solution, compared to Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service, this path is fraught with pitfalls and problems that they would encounter.
With the Xbox 360’s release, there was a degree of backwards compatibility that went from the original Xbox’ x86 architecture to the 360’s PPC. This was achieved by the use of tailored emulation profiles, but given the complexity of console development, these emulation layers were only compatible with a limited selection of games, and even then many games featured bugs and issues.
Around about the same time, Apple were making the jump in the opposite direction, from PPC to x86-based Intel CPUs. As a way of easing that transition they used a single multi-purpose dynamic translation layer called Rosetta, which ran on-the-fly. A less efficient and effective situation, it was best used for less demanding tasks like word processing, and performance suffered when it was turned to more intensive tasks like video editing or gaming. However, playing PPC games was possible by way of brute force, when the Intel CPUs in newer Macs was able to outstrip the PPC CPUs of old.
Which leaves Microsoft’s dream of getting Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One in doubt. What made these previous examples of emulation between PPC and x86 architectures possible was the wealth of additional processing power, but that’s not quite the case for this latest generation.
The eight cores of the Xbox One’s CPU are not individually stronger than the cores of the 360’s CPU, meaning that a brute force solution isn’t really possible, especially when taking into consideration the lengths to which code was optimised to get every ounce of performance from the last generation’s hardware.
In other words, don’t get your hopes up.
Source: Kotaku
Lyts1985
I love these techy articles, nice one Tef, an interesting read :-)
I dunno, I must be alone in not being concerned about backwards compatibility. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be nice to get shot of the PS3 and just have one box but I’m not losing sleep over it. If it can’t\won’t be done, so be it.
yiddo
Sony were also reported to be looking into other methods apart from just PS Now – though it’s according to a ‘trusted source’, so take it as you will.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ps4-to-get-ps1-and-ps2-backwards-compatibility
Would be good to see both consoles eventually be fully backwards compatible, one way or the other.
bunimomike
It’s always nice to see Sony and Microsoft thinking about this (and putting things into action wherever possible).
My friend took her newly bought PS4 back to Game last week when she realised it wasn’t backward compatible. Sure, she should have checked into that before purchase but either way… there wasn’t going to be a PS4 in her house any time soon. Equally, I’m reading about more and more folk waiting until Sony sort out MP3 and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance?) before moving on up to the new kid in town.
Interestingly, my casual gaming friends (those that haven’t leapt onto the PS4 bandwagon) are the ones who don’t have technology dotted around their house. This means they’re making up the majority of my friends who use their PS3 to stream to so they can watch their content. It also means that they’re very confused why the newer, more expensive PS4 doesn’t have these basic features.
TSBonyman
B..b..but.. “if you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards”? :)
Nice to see they’ve changed that tune at least.
Deathbrin
Isn’t MS’s Cloud supposed to add processing power to Xbox One which is exactly what this requires?
Stefan L
Yes, but that’s only really applicable when the game and design have been created with the support of Azure processing in mind and the medium-high latency that this would involve. As soon as you look to using the cloud to handle emulation, you are effectively looking at a game streaming solution like OnLive or PS Now, rather than playing the game locally.
JR.
Not interested in BC on PS4/XBO. I thought I wanted it last gen but I can count on one hand the number of times I played a PS2 game on my launch PS3. I understand why people do want it but I’d much rather have a netflix based subscription service to stream the whole back catalogue of games for about £9.99 a month.