Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility Illuminated

A lot of us have been wondering about the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility issue. Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 will be partially backwards compatible. What does that mean? Today we spoke with an industry source who shed some light on the subject.

One of the rumors floating around is that backwards compatibility will only work with a hard drive, which would have left Core systems out in the cold. As it turns out, that's only partially true. In many cases, the hard drive will indeed be necessary because you'll need an Xbox emulator file to sit on the hard drive (it's still unconfirmed whether this emulator comes pre-shipped on 360 hard drives but it is highly likely the case) and make your Xbox games 360-friendly. However, our understanding is that this isn't perfectly foolproof, and that it may not work in every single case.

What's especially interesting, though, is that select premium Xbox titles in the present and future are getting special treatment. We've learned that Microsoft is inviting some developers to make their current Xbox titles backwards compatible for both 360 SKUs -- that the games themselves will contain the Xbox 360 emulation code on them. In fact, certain Xbox titles already contain the code to boot up under emulation on the Xbox 360. Teams from Microsoft are helping developers with the project.

But resources are limited, so only triple A titles will get this kind of attention, and only products coming out in the window after the Xbox 360 announcement. Which ones? We have some hints, but nothing we can officially talk about yet. But don't worry, we're on the case.