Original XBOX collecting and backwards compatibility issues...

[WarmSignal]

If I can make until the release, I'm going to try and get rid of my yet-to-RROD console, and get the new slim model.

[Guntz]

The PS2 played DVD without add-ons, was reliable and had a shitload of awesome games. The D-Pad on the DualShock2 was the same as every other Sony D-pad, which is much better for fighting games when compared to the Xbox (or even 360, which was worse)

Well I don't like it very much. That's just my opinion.

I owned all 3 consoles from their release and bought a lot of software for all of them. The PS2 is more reliable than Xbox hardware IMO. I've seen sticks fail and lose calibration permanently for no reason on official S controllers more than once.

I'll give ya that on the Xbox controller reliability, it's hard finding ones that actually work. Thankfully the rest of the controller is good.

EDIT: Missing bracket

As far as the Gamecube is concerned, it's not worth a legitimate comparison. It's controller was absolutely terrible, but it worked.

I thought the GameCube was just fine. Again just my opinion.

So that means that Smashing Drive was popular? I mean, it sold like crap and it was panned universally. Just sayin'

Either like Kool Kitty said and it used a standard API or the devs paid for support.

The whole fact about one console featuring Ati or Nvidia is the least important, indeed this would be the section in which both have more similarities, both ATi and Nvidia GPUs are PC-based chipsets, the problem lies in the type of CPU that each one has, the CPU found on the Xbox is CISC based ,while the 360 CPU is RISC based.

Thanks for clearing that up. All I remembered was something about clear hardware differences. It's been a while since I ever needed to remember something Xbox related. Nobody ever talks about it.

EDIT: Added another quote

I thought the Wii was also limited, with a quite a few GameCube games that would not work. Could of heard wrong, though.

The Wii isn't compatible with the Game Boy Player, that alone is a crime!

[gamevet]

I find 3D games weather better on Xbox in graphics and sound than on PS2 (and quite rightly so, the PS2 is a POS machine). 2D games such as old arcade ports don't really differ between the two consoles, so go with whichever has the controller you like better.

Sony's first/2nd party stuff holds up very well. Gran Turismo 4 still looks pretty good, as does Final Fantasy X.

If I recall correctly, so don't quote me on this, Microsoft's contract with Nvidia to produce the Xbox's chipset ran out, which is why the Xbox was so abruptly dropped like it was.

Sorry, I'm quoting you!

Nvidia manufactured and owned the rights to the graphics chipset. Nvidia could charge MS whatever they had agreed to when they'd signed the contract, so the price really never came down. MS couldn't cut costs on the console, because of the Nvidia chipset, thus they couldn't lower prices on a console that was already losing money to produce.

Just to get this out of the way, I never grew up with Sony consoles so I have no nostalgic disposition to the hardware in any way. I have given the controller an objective assessment and my opinion has and probably will never change. The PS controller is just plain awful.

The D-Pad sucks, the left control stick is in the wrong place, the face buttons are retarded, the handles do not offer sufficient grip to hold onto the controller very well and because of the controller's terrible shape, I often have trouble using the R1, R2, L1 and L2 buttons at the same time.

I thought the dual-shock was alright, until I had used the S-controller on the XBox. The L2 and R2 triggers just feel out of place and the controller is too small for the average sized hands.

. Only the most popular games received support, not necessarily because they sold well.

Did we really need BC with older sports titles?

The choices were rather odd and in some cases rather suspicious. I highly doubt it would have been that difficult to port the arcade compilations offered by Midway, Taito and Konami. Midway's Arcade Treasures was great on the XBox, because it had online high score tables, and you could also compare scores with your friends. I have a feeling they weren't supported, so MS could charge us to buy those games one at a time for the 360.

[The Sports Guy]

The only things that stunk about the original Xbox when it was time to purchase a system in that generation was that it couldn't play DVDs without the remote (a big deal for me when it came out - and it wasn't already backwards compatible with something before it) and I didn't know any of the exclusive titles at the time.

So, the PS2 was a much better decision at the time. But, as time went on, the Xbox and its growing army of exclusives, namely Halo 2 and FarCry: instincts, grew on me and I eventually preferred Xbox over the PS2.

My best gaming buddy Lance bought an Xbox 360 on the launch day and subsequently sold me his Xbox. I got my time on it and had the games I liked the most, namely MVP Baseball 2005 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005.

When I got the 360, finally and got the Farcry game (which sucks compared to the original Xbox game), I was okay with them not having all of the games backwards compatible. It was with the idea that they were constantly adding games to the list (somewhere I read that). But, then I'm pretty sure they stopped doing it somewhere down the line.

So, I went out and bought a PS2 for those sports games and only play the Xbox games that are emulated. I probably will buy a Xbox again to figure out how to hack it to play emulators and to have the original library available. That's my four cents.

[Knuckle Duster]

Xbox 360 doesn't emulate Xbox games. It plays recompiled & modified .exe's natively that can use the same game files. It was originally called the Direct X(Box) for a reason.

[kool kitty89]

If I can make until the release, I'm going to try and get rid of my yet-to-RROD console, and get the new slim model.

If the warranty is expired (or expires before it RRODs), you might consider a preventative mod rather than replacement. The same mod used to repair RROD'd consoles (with desoldered GPUs), but before the GPU desolders itsself.

Granted, that only fixes the most prevalent problem (overheating GPU and board warping), other things like the DVD drive can still be problematic. (and overheating can still occur, and the system is designed to automatically shut off -giving 2 bar red ring, it's just far less likely to be damaged by such)

I thought the Wii was also limited, with a quite a few GameCube games that would not work. Could of heard wrong, though.

It doesn't work with the game boy player, but I'm not aware of anything else that's a problem. A ton of games will only run in 480i though, so if the TV/monitor has problems with that, that's a separate issue.

Nvidia manufactured and owned the rights to the graphics chipset. Nvidia could charge MS whatever they had agreed to when they'd signed the contract, so the price really never came down. MS couldn't cut costs on the console, because of the Nvidia chipset, thus they couldn't lower prices on a console that was already losing money to produce.

Is the situation with ATi and the Xenos any different? Does MS own a license for it, or the rights to the chip?

I thought the dual-shock was alright, until I had used the S-controller on the XBox. The L2 and R2 triggers just feel out of place and the controller is too small for the average sized hands.

I'll go one step further and say the Duke is my preferred Xbox controller and my favorite to second favorite stock controller of that console generation, so you can imagine the small size of the dual shock controller hits all the harder; except Nintendo managed to design the small GC controller to be fairly comfortable with big hands too. (better than N64, in spite of the smaller size) It's all about the grip shape and button placement. (and button size/shape/resistance -N64 was better in that regard IMO)

I think the early dual analog controller released to the west was better in that respect, with the much longer grips. Otherwise, there's 3rd party controllers to look at.

Xbox 360 doesn't emulate Xbox games. It plays recompiled & modified .exe's natively that can use the same game files. It was originally called the Direct X(Box) for a reason.

Hence why games bypassing the Direct X API (either using a modified/cusomt API, or using direct hardware access for certain things -as was the norm on older consoles) is problematic for such "compatibility."

[gamevet]

Is the situation with ATi and the Xenos any different? Does MS own a license for it, or the rights to the chip?

ATI has been a lot more flexible with their technologies than NVidia has. They've been working with IBM to incorporate their technology into a single chip that has the GPU and CPU together. It may be in the upcoming design of the 360 slim.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/valhalla...news-6160.html

It's also worth noting that Nintendo was able to sell the GC (ATI flipper) for $99. I doubt they'd do that at a loss.

[kool kitty89]

Also, proving Xbox games are emulated on 360 is easy to test out at home. I myself am a huge Counter-Strike fan, I love playing on both Live and Steam.

I got an Xbox for Valentines day, and before that point I played the shit out of Counter-Strike on 360. When I first booted CS up on an Xbox, It quickly became apparent that Counter-Strike plays at a higher framerate on it's native console.

It probably doesn't help that I'm a frame counting freak that will notice when things are a tad off, but I know a stuttering framerate when I see one.

I should make a comparison video someday.

All that proves is that the game was recompiled much less efficiently than it was originally made for the Xbox: OR the game did some non-standard stuff bypassing the API and that needed to be emulated in software. (or both)

It's more like extensive patches than emulation. (to the extent of a patch replacing the original game executable entirely and possibly adding some bits to that to emulate the non-standard bits)

ATI has been a lot more flexible with their technologies than NVidia has. They've been working with IBM to incorporate their technology into a single chip that has the GPU and CPU together. It may be in the upcoming design of the 360 slim.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/valhalla...news-6160.html

And AMD is fine with the IBM collaboration?

It's also worth noting that Nintendo was able to sell the GC (ATI flipper) for $99. I doubt they'd do that at a loss.

All that makes you wonder why MS didn't go for ATi in the first place...

I've also wondered why MS went with an Intel CPU rather than AMD, but maybe Intel had better offerings for embedded implementations than AMD... Usually AMD has higher cost/performance components available though. Maybe power consumption came into play too. --The most comparable Duron had 50% higher power dissipation and 1/2 the L2 cache, but 3x the FSB speed. (though the latter may not have been that important due to the shared bus architecture of the Xbox) Edit: FSB is only 50% faster, I was thinking of the Celeron 733, the PIII 733 has 2x the FSB speed.

Doing a quick look at wiki's pages, it looks like the ATi Radeon 8500 was the closest to the Xbox's chipset in performance at the time (or the GeForce 3 the latter was derived from), not sure how those compared cost-wise though. (short of that, the next closest is the Radeon 7500 I think)
And the closest AMD CPU to the PIII/Celleron 733 (FSB is as fast as PIII, but L2 is 1/2 like Celeron) would probably be a Duron 700. (and power dissipation is only 27% higher in that case, the Duron 750 leaps to 50%)

All hindsight now, but ATi and AMD's merger would probably have made things even more cost effective had MS used their chipsets. (in the context of the 360, the ca 2005 Athlon 64 X2)
Of course, that's only considering stock offerings; the Xenon was a custom job as was the PIII derivative of the Xbox (albeit the latter was pretty much a PIII 733 with 1/2 the cache and compact package)

[old man]

Nintendo's graphics processor was originally created by a company called Art-X, who were bought by Ati shortly before the GC's release. Also, I read an interview once of one of Nintendo's female executives who claimed Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss. The idea is just absurd to them. That kind of reinforces the claim GC's were being made for about $35 towards the end of the system's life cycle.

[OldSchool]

You're thinking of either Land of The Dead, or Stubbs The Zombie... or you could be talking about the 360 game Dead Rising.



Here's a probably not perfect list of all the exclusives (including console exclusives), there is actually quite a bit, more than 200.

- Advent Rising
- AirForce Delta Storm
- American McGee Presents Scrapland
- AMF Bowling 2004
- Amped Snowboarding
- Amped Snowboarding 2
- Apex
- Armed and Dangerous
- Army Men: Major Malfunction
- Arx Fatalis
- Azurik: Rise of Perathia
- Bass Pro Shops Trophy Hunter 2007
- Bicycle Casino
- Blackstone: Magic and Steel
- Blinx 2
- Blinx: The Time Sweeper
- Blood Wake
- Bloody Roar Extreme
- Breakdown
- Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon
- Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon
- Brute Force
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
- Carve
- Championship Bowling
- Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver
- Chicago Enforcer
- Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
- Circus Maximus Chariot Wars
- Classified: The Sentinel Crisis
- Close Combat: First to Fight
- Cold War
- Colin McRae Rally 04
- Colin McRae Rally 2005
- Combat Task Force 121
- Conker: Live and Reloaded
- Counter Strike
- Crash Bandicoot: Super Pack
- Crazy Taxi 3
- Crime Life Gang Wars
- Crimson Sea
- Crimson Skies
- Crusty Demons
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
- Curse: The Eye of Isis
- Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix
- Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2
- Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 3
- Dance Dance Revolution ULTRAMIX 4
- Dead Mans Hand
- Dead or Alive 3
- Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball
- Dead or Alive Ultimate
- Deathrow
- Deus Ex: Invisible War
- Dino Crisis 3
- Doom 3
- Doom 3: Collectors Edition
- Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
- Drake of the 99 Dragons
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
- Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes
- Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The
- Enclave
- Fable
- Fable: The Lost Chapters
- Far Cry: Instincts
- Far Cry: Instincts Evolution
- Forza Motorsport
- Furious Karting
- Fuzion Frenzy
- Galleon
- Genma Onimusha
- Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike
- Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter: Limited Edition
- Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
- Grabbed by the Ghoulies
- Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball
- Group S Challenge
- Guilty Gear X2: Reload
- Gungriffon: Allied Strike
- GunMetal
- Gunvalkyrie
- Half-Life 2
- Halo
- Halo 2
- Halo 2: Collectors Edition
- Halo 2 Map Pak
- Halo Triple Pack
- House of the Dead 3
- Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer
- IHRA Drag Racing 2004
- Inside Pitch 2003
- Iron Phoenix
- Jade Empire
- Jade Empire: Limited Edition
- Jet Set Radio Future
- Kabuki Warriors Fighting
- Kakuto Chojin
- Kingdom Under Fire: Crusades
- Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes
- King of Fighters Neowave
- Knight's Apprentice: Memorick's Adventures
- Kung Fu Chaos
- Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green
- Last Bounty Hunter
- Links 2004
- Loons Fight for Fame
- Mad Dash Racing
- Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds
- Maximum Chase
- MechAssault
- MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf
- MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf Limited Edition
- Men of Valor
- Metal Dungeon
- Midtown Madness 3
- Monster 4X4: World Circuit
- Morrowind Gold: Game Of The Year
- Mortal Kombat: Deception Kollector's Edition
- Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit
- Myst IV: Revelation
- NBA Inside Drive 2002
- NBA Inside Drive 2003
- NBA Inside Drive 2004
- New Legends
- NFL Fever 2002
- NFL Fever 2003
- NFL Fever 2004
- NHL Rivals 2004
- Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness
- Nightcaster II: Equinox
- Ninja Gaiden
- Ninja Gaiden Black
- Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee
- Oddworld: Strangers Wrath
- Operation Flashpoint: Elite
- Otogi 2
- Otogi: Myth of Demons
- Outlaw Golf: 9 Holes of Christmas
- Outlaw Golf: 9 More Holes of X-Mas
- Outlaw Golf and SeaBlade
- Outlaw Golf: Holiday Golf
- Outlaw Volleyball
- Outrun 2
- Panzer Dragoon Orta
- Phantom Crash
- Phantom Dust
- Prisoner of War
- Pro Cast Sports Fishing
- Pro Fishing Challenge
- Project Gotham Racing
- Project Gotham Racing 2
- Pulse Racer
- Pure Pinball
- Quantum Redshift
- Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow
- Rainbow Six: Critical Hour
- Ralli Sport Challenge
- Ralli Sport Challenge 2
- Raze's Hell
- RoboCop
- Roller Coaster Tycoon
- Room Zoom
- Samurai Shodown V
- SeaBlade
- Sega GT 2002
- Sega GT 2002/JSRF Combo Pack
- Sega GT Online
- Serious Sam
- Serious Sam II
- Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
- Shattered Union
- Shenmue II
- Shrek
- Shrek 2/Shark Tale: 2 Games in 1
- Sid Meiers Pirates! Live the Life
- Silent Scope Complete
- Sneakers
- Soldier of Fortune 2
- Sonic Heroes & Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
- Sonic Mega Collection Plus & Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
- Special Forces Nemesis Strike
- Spikeout Battle Street
- Splat Magazine: Renegade Paintball
- Spy vs. Spy
- Stake: Fortune Fighter
- Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars/Tetris Worlds Combo Pack
- Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic
- Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic 2
- Star Wars Obi-Wan
- Star Wars: Republic Commando
- Star Wars: Starfighter Special Edition
- Steel Battalion
- Steel Battalion: Line of Contact
- Still Life
- Stubbs the Zombie
- Sudeki
- Superman: The Man of Steel
- SVC Chaos - SNK vs Capcom
- Syberia
- Syberia II
- Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus
- Tecmo Classic Arcade
- Tenchu: Return From Darkness
- Tennis Masters Series 2003
- Tetris World Online
- Thief: Deadly Shadows
- TOCA Race Driver 2/Colin McRae Rally 04 Combo Pack
- ToeJam and Earl 3
- Tom Clancys Classic Trilogy
- Top Gear: RPM Tuning
- Top Spin
- Tork: Prehistoric Punk
- Totaled
- TransWorld Snowboarding
- TRON 2.0 Killer App
- True Crimes: New York City, Collector's Edition
- UFC Tapout
- UFC Tapout 2
- Ultimate Beach Soccer
- Ultra Bust-A-Move X
- Unreal Championship
- Unreal Championship 2
- Unreal II: The Awakening
- Volvo: Drive for Life
- Voodoo Vince
- WarPath
- Whacked
- Wings of War
- World Racing
- World Racing 2
- World Series Baseball
- World War II: Combat Iwo Jima
- World War II: Combat Road To Berlin
- Worms 4: Mayhem
- WWE Raw 2
- WWE Wrestlemania 21
- WWF Raw
- Xyanide
- Yager
- Yu-Gi-Oh: Dawn of Destiny

Well shitbeans, that's a 360 game... ok, I thought it was an Xbox game. Thks for the clrification.


Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
Cold War
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Counter Strike (this came out for Xbox? lol... really?)
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Doom 3 (wow, I bet this looks gash on Xbox)
Doom 3 ROE
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Far Cry
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Half-Life 2 (again, must look gash on Xbox)
Halo
House of the Dead 3
Jade Empire: Special Edition
Serious Sam
Serious Sam II
Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
Soldier of Fortune 2
Sonic Mega Collection
Special Forces Nemesis Strike
Still Life
Thief: Deadly Shadows
TRON 2.0
Unreal Tournament
Unreal 2
World War II: Combat Road To Berlin
Worms 4: Mayhem

I have all of those ^ for PC. Those aren't "console exclusives"... Counterstrike, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Farcry, ESIII, the Serious Sam games, and the Unreal games are PC originals. Do a lil bit more homework on your list next time, but thanks for the list regardless.

Impressive list... it's making me think about getting an Xbox now.. but fukin a, I'm not buying an Xbox and a 360. Microsoft should have made the 360 backwards compatible.

what to do...

I owned the XBox since launch and I went through four different units all replaced under warranty.

The 360 has fared better for me, since launch I only had my original system RROD.

Jesus Christ... this really makes me want to mod an Xbox and not give Microsoft my money. WHYth does anyone support them when they make such a shitty product?

Do you know how many computers I've had go bad on me in my lifetime... I've never lost a CPU or a GPU. I've lost a couple HDs and that's it.

I'm not surprised current Consoles have issues like this... the same can be said for computers sold at Best Buy = they're poorly put together and the components are less than optimal.

[WarmSignal]

I have all of those ^ for PC. Those aren't "console exclusives"... Counterstrike, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Farcry, ESIII, the Serious Sam games, and the Unreal games are PC originals. Do a lil bit more homework on your list next time, but thanks for the list regardless.

I'm well aware those game are also available on PC, but was pretty sure the term "console exclusive" meant the game in question was exclusive to a platform in the home console market, while also available on PC, i.e., "Mass Effect is a console exclusive for 360", at least Wikipedia acknowledges the term. Though I can imagine PC fans don't take very kindly to it.

But either way, a lot of good PC games on Xbox that were never on PS2 or GameCube.

[gamevet]

Nintendo's graphics processor was originally created by a company called Art-X, who were bought by Ati shortly before the GC's release. Also, I read an interview once of one of Nintendo's female executives who claimed Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss. The idea is just absurd to them. That kind of reinforces the claim GC's were being made for about $35 towards the end of the system's life cycle.

That doesn't sound right. The Flipper GPU was talked about long before the GC was released. The name flipper came from Gamecub'e code-name: project Dolphin.

And AMD is fine with the IBM collaboration?

As long as AMD is making money (and it's not lining Intel's pockets) they're probably fine with that.

All that makes you wonder why MS didn't go for ATi in the first place...

The Geforce 3 was considered the best bang for the buck back then. MS contracted Nvidia to come up with a custom version of the GF3, and that's what ended up in the Xbox.

I've also wondered why MS went with an Intel CPU rather than AMD, but maybe Intel had better offerings for embedded implementations than AMD... Usually AMD has higher cost/performance components available though. Maybe power consumption came into play too. --The most comparable Duron had 50% higher power dissipation and 1/2 the L2 cache, but 3x the FSB speed. (though the latter may not have been that important due to the shared bus architecture of the Xbox) Edit: FSB is only 50% faster, I was thinking of the Celeron 733, the PIII 733 has 2x the FSB speed.

Honestly, Intel was the best chip manufacturer on the planet at the time. AMD probably didn't have the resources to pump out millions of chips within a year's time either.

Don't forget, this was a custom P3. It may have had better specs than your standart PIII @ 733Mhz.

[kool kitty89]

Nintendo's graphics processor was originally created by a company called Art-X, who were bought by Ati shortly before the GC's release. Also, I read an interview once of one of Nintendo's female executives who claimed Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss. The idea is just absurd to them. That kind of reinforces the claim GC's were being made for about $35 towards the end of the system's life cycle.

If that's the case, Nintendo must be making a killing on the Wii.

The Geforce 3 was considered the best bang for the buck back then. MS contracted Nvidia to come up with a custom version of the GF3, and that's what ended up in the Xbox.

But, at the time, would it have been clear to be the best long-term strategy? (without the benefit of hindsight, I mean) Did ATi have a similar reputation then of greater flexibility compared to Nvidia?

Honestly, Intel was the best chip manufacturer on the planet at the time. AMD probably didn't have the resources to pump out millions of chips within a year's time either.

Heh, wasn't that one of the major reasons Apple had for switching to X86 CPUs?

Still, if AMD had been willing to allow for second sourcing on whatever chip was chosen, that problem could have been addressed. (I'd imagine as long as the licensing agreements were tight enough and AMD had their own quota, it might have worked)
But it really wouldn't matter that much overall, if Intel was the best cost/flexibility option fine. Pretty much any X86 CPU should be fully backwards compatible as long as the older drivers are supported. (then again, a different video card shouldn't have mattered either as long as it was compatible with the APIs used -except games bypassing the standard APIs)

Don't forget, this was a custom P3. It may have had better specs than your standart PIII @ 733Mhz.

Yes, I mentioned that, and again, it seems to be 1/2 way between the Coppermarine Celeron and PIII, with the 128 kB L2 cache of the Celeron and 133 MT/s FSB of the full PIII. (Celeron 733 used a 66 MT/s FSB)

[old man]

That doesn't sound right. The Flipper GPU was talked about long before the GC was released. The name flipper came from Gamecub'e code-name: project Dolphin.

I thought flipper was the code name for the Power PC cpu made by IBM.

[kool kitty89]

I thought flipper was the code name for the Power PC cpu made by IBM.

That's Gekko.