Psychonauts still not guaranteed to be Xbox 360-compatible

Perhaps they should hire Emulation Pirates to do the jobs Ninjas aren't capable of doing.

Um..."shipping the game"? I thought they were just working on adding it to the updates or w/e they do to make it backward compatible. Oo

Since this is obviously life or death for this game to be played...use your original Xbox. Microsoft could care less about the 2000-5000 people in the WHOLE WORLD who care about this game being backwards compatible (I didnt say who bought the game because some people are smart enough to actually play it on the system it was designed for). The could use their resouces more effectively elsewhere. Or maybe how bout this. How bout the designers of the game make a NEW VERSION for the 360. How bout they spend THEIR resources and put THEIR necks on the line. We will see how many people would want to play the game then...

>>"We may run into technical limitations that will prevent us from ever shipping the game"

Eh? Shipping the game? Either this is dodgy wording or I'm suddenly very confused indeed.

#1. Everybody knows that ninjas and pirates in unison are the most potent combination known to man. Jesus, get with the program!

I don't get why Microsoft is unwilling to let developers help make these games backward compatible, simultaneously preventing new Xbox 1 games from being immediately available to 360 owners. I mean, I'm sure Bungie helped get Halo 1 & 2 backward compatible and that turned out very well. Why can't MS extend a similar fig leaf to others, or at least get their help?

I've never understood why people think that Microsoft just has a switch they can throw to activate backward compatibility. The fact of the matter is that doing BC via a purely SOFTWARE route is flat-out difficult. Really, really difficult, particularly when you have to work with different hardware, and the software you're trying to emulate is fine-tuned and specifically tailored to hardware you don't have available.

The best games are written 'to the metal'. There's really little hope to see those things emulated on the 360, despite how hard people try. It's only the 'publish in three months' pieces of steaming slag that barely use the original XBox's power that emulate smoothly - Hence Barbie Horse Adventures.

A hardware solution is really the optimum answer to the BC question - But that wasn't possible for Microsoft without shelling out money for royalties to companies which no longer wish to do business with them. I hope they learned their lesson there.

Here's to hoping, though. Maybe those ninjas have a few tricks up their sleve.

ooooh I can't wait to read comments from angry gamers about said Ninja's abilities

emulating games is just SO EASY right! omg just make it work!

it's easy because I said it's easy!

software still quote "ships" even if it's just released into the 360 backwards compatible matrix magical land

you see... professionals... (programmers) use highly technical terms that tend to confuse gamers with 4th grade educations

It sucks that it's ultimately talented developers who pushed the original hardware that get screwed over. Not that Majesco didn't screw Psychonauts over in the first place... crack marketing job...

Cage, http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/care.html

Holy crap people, it's on the PC as well. Get it for that, it's just as fun. The game is freakin' sweet, and hilarious, yes, but bitching at Microsoft to get it compatible is pointless.

Plus if you sold your Xbox for a 360, well, that's your mistake.

"Cage, http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/care.html"

you know that's opinion and not fact, right? ah, who am i kidding? you could probably care less.

seriously though, that's a lame argument on that site. both are acceptable.

I appreciate everyone who tries to argue on behalf of Microsoft, telling us that the task of making eveyr game backwards compatible is a difficult one indeed. Being in the software industry, I understand completely and know how difficult it might be.

The fact of the matter is this: they promised backwards compatibility upon release of the 360. That really was an unfair promise, since they knew what their task was ahead of time. There's no way the difficulty of the task could have sprung upon them as a surprise, so before the 360 was released they should have properly set expectations and announce that they will TRY to make all games backwards compatible, but for the most part theprocess would be slow and some of the favorites might get left off the list. Thenwe'd be all currently applauding their continued efforts, not chastising them for their lack of it.

I own a large number of gaming systems dating back to the NES (and even have a 2600 in my home). They are all sitting out, unconnected, on a bookshelf in my home as we speak, simply for the reason that if I feel like playing an older game at any point in time, I can. But having so many systems out there, well, it's a space hog and an eye sore, frankly. So when I heard that the PS3 would be able to play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games, the XBox 360 would be able to play 360 and regular XBox games, and the Wii (at a price for the older games for their virtual console) could play some NES, SNES, and N64 games, I rejoiced. I might finally be able to put way some old systems.

So it's easy to just tell someone to use the old system, but there are practical reasons why we'd prefer not to. It would have just been nice if we could have put the older systems away finally, especially since that's what was promised to us long ago.

one would think that microsoft would already have quite a bit of documentation and technical information on psychonauts, as double-fine was essentially a microsoft second party, and psychonauts an xbox exclusive, until microsoft did their great developer purge in 2004.
as for letting developers help with bc, i'm not sure what their reasoning is for not letting double-fine assist, but the bungie situation was a little different. aside from the sheer popularity of the halo series, bungie also had both a great deal of experience in porting x86 code to powerpc architecture, they actually have scripts written for just that purpose.

Trust me when I tell you that the emulation/virtualization team has more profitable things to work on (Virtual PC / Virtual Server) than BC for Xbox 1 games. That being said, they are doing their best to listen to the community and meet demand as much as reasonable.

#5's point is completely off base as Bungie is a fully owned MS asset so the same legal liabilities and such exist when they work on a project.

In regards to why other devs are not involved more deeply in the coding for BC, it is not even close to the same thing to code for BC as it is to write a game. Leave that to the BC pros and let the game devs write new games. Also, there is the issue of MS coding standards and such to ensure that someone doesn't build a trusted path app that allows piracy on the 360.

Suffice to say that there are bigger issues here than your average game is really thinking about and MS is working hard to make you all happy... at least we listen unlike the "other" guys...

;-)

NewtypeCJ, what makes you think that the emu ninjas don't ask for information when they're having trouble figuring out what is going wrong?

There is so much misinformation, rampant speculation, and baseless assumptions being made here its rediculous.

The whiney gimme every game now attitude most people have is getting equally rediculous. You all act like it is some personal insult that [insert favorite game here] isn't done yet. Everyone's "favorite game" is different. They aren't all going to get done at once. Ergo, someone's favorite game will probably be working before yours. Especially a game that sold less copies than 360s sold in Japan. Get over it.

"Cage, http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/care.html"

I bet you've been waiting to use that link for a long time. What...do you got thru posts looking for "I could care less"? Please stay on topic. How did this guy get a star?!?

I call bullshit on this one. It's not *that* bloody difficult to emulate a game. I think the ninja is just giving an excuse in the case of if they run into any obstacles they might not give the effort to work around them.

jchensor, they promised top selling games at launch. No more, no less. Are there top selling games on the list? Yes? They promised that they would continue to work on BC after launch, with the GOAL of eventually making every xbox game compatible. Have they continued to work on it? Yes.

Not once did they say that the 360 would be 100% bc at launch, regardless of what you heard in your fantasy world.

jchensor wrote: "The fact of the matter is this: they promised backwards compatibility upon release of the 360."

And they delivered, big time.

They said the top games would work, not every title. People thought that meant 10-20 games tops, we got 200.

"There's no way the difficulty of the task could have sprung upon them as a surprise, so before the 360 was released they should have properly set expectations and announce that they will TRY to make all games backwards compatible, but for the most part the process would be slow and some of the favorites might get left off the list."

Were you not paying attention? That's EXACTLY how it went down. In fact most people were very surprised at how long the list was when it was released, not that it stopped people from complaining mind you.

As of the last update, only 2 of the best selling games are not represented in some form on the 360.

Well, maybe if these emo ninjas would stop spending all their time painting their fingernails black and moping about in a state of existential crisis, then just maybe, we could get Psychonauts up and running.

It always amazes me when people actually defend incompetence.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft really screwed up the design of the 360 by not making it backwards compatible with the first Xbox. In this day and age it's ridiculous to not support legacy software. There's no denying that Microsoft really screwed over their customers with the 360. I can't say I'm surprised since their behavior is consistent (Office, Windows, Virtual PC, etc.). Still, it's very dissappointing.

"Only" missing 2 of the best selling games... which is only if you count 10 games. True, that's an admirable effort, but that post that Joystiq offered up from CheapAssGamer also mentioned that only 27% of the top 300 games are backwards compatible. It's fun skewing statistics to make strengthen your case. Might as well say 100% of the top selling games are compatible, if you limit it to the top 3. Top 10 is a good place to start, I'm not questioning that. But you really have to look at a bigger picture. Is 27% of the top 300 games really good enough? I'm not saying it's not, but it is definitely something to think about and weigh into your opinion, regardless of which way you lean.

As for what Microsoft said before, I apologize if I misunderstood them. If full backwards compatibility is not what they promised before, then I really am not sure why everyone is so upset about the BC List. I was under the impression most people were angry because they promised so much. Was this what they announced at their E3 conferece before 360 was launched? Or was this something they qualified afterwards? It just seems like, if it were going to be this difficult to pull off, why bother trying in the first place? As many have mentioned, it seems far more productive to simply use those resources for something else and leave us all happily using our original XBoxes without any hopes something like Psychonauts or Beyond Good & Evil will be made compatible.

From #22: "The fact of the matter is that Microsoft really screwed up the design of the 360 by not making it backwards compatible with the first Xbox."

I'm not denying that they didn't deliver what they promised. Yeah, they screwed up there, but do you realize how much the 360 would have cost if they used a hardware based solution? As in, the same as the solution Sony used in the PS2? They would have had to pay money to IBM, Intel, nVidia, AND ATi for each box they made. Nevermind the fact that nVidia won't do any favors for Microsoft ever again, incluidng making the necessary hardware.

It probably would've made the 360 cost much, much more than 599 US Dollars.

Software emulation sucks. This is why the Wii will likely use hardware to emulate a ten-year old console. Microsoft's use of software BC wasn't a great solution, but the hardware route was economically unrealistic. They really screwed themselves when their relationship with nVidia went sour.

funkonaut:
the only reason the ps2 was backwards compatible is because sony built the emotion engine around the original playstation chipset. also if the ps3 does not have an emotion engine, then sony will be in the same boat as microsoft, trying to use software to emulate old hardware.

on a side note only 6 of the xbox games to sell over a million copies are not backwards compatible

jchensor - I was talking about every Xbox game that sold over a million units, the actual best sellers. CheapAssGamer used the 300 best reviewed games rather than the games that people actually own. Of course only a fraction of those 300 titles have emulation profiles when only 200+ games have been emulated. Sure Psychonaughts got great reviews, but only 50k people bought it, so it makes more sense to first concentrate on the games that did sell well (Halo, Fable, GTA) and don't have a 360 counterpart (PGR, Madden, NFS) rather than games that only a very small fraction of people own. If you look at the best sellers, which is what MS said they were going to start with, they are doing a great job so far, but certainly could do more. I know there are a few games I have that I'd love to play on the 360, but I'm being patient.

"Was this what they announced at their E3 conferece before 360 was launched?"

Yes. At E3 on May 16th 2005 they said "top-selling games" and stressed that not every game would work, only the games with the best sales. This later made people mad that games that were NOT best sellers made it on the list, but that's another story altogether.

On Nov 12th 2005, before they system hit the shelves, they gave out the first complete list of backward compatible games.

"It just seems like, if it were going to be this difficult to pull off, why bother trying in the first place?"

You must be new, don't take that as a dig, but had you been here for a while you would have read about it. Below is the blog of the actual engineer who got emulation working. I had read that they originally thought it WAS impossible to get working, but did it because the consumers wanted the feature.

http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/xbox360.html

Read the articles below, they should answer some more of your questions:

http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1245/Xbox-360-FAQs/p4/#backward
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilityqa.htm

I have a crazy idea. If you want to play Psychonauts so bad, then just keep the original Xbox. Playing on the actually hardware is 1,000 times better than emulating that system.

Nope, not new, been reading this site for quite some time now. It was a rhetorical question, not one that I actually wanted to be answered. But... um... thanks anyhow? ^_^

At this point I'd like to announce, "I told you so."

Well, I did.

The phrase 'shipping' is used correctly, even if it only means a download. Each game has a separate file of translated binary code and other material to enable its use. Pure real-time emulation would not have sufficient performance, so a lot of the emulation is performed in advance to obtain native PPC code that runs much faster. The code portion a typical game is tiny compared to the audiovisual assets, so the download is fairly small.

When they speak of shipping a game for emulation they mean that file which enables the game's use on the 360. That is the BC Team's product.

Microsoft intends to get as much stuff working as possible. They did not set a date for when this will have been achieved. It would be impossible to accurately predict unless some arbitrary date is simply treated as a cut off point. Likely they have some loosely thought out priorites for when they'd have to say, "This is as good as it gets." Say, if six months goes by without any significant gains tot he list of usable games. Because at a point like that the cost for each small step forward is just too high.

It's pretty silly to say Microsoft screwed up the design of the Xbox 360. The opposite is true. Far more time and thought went into the 360 than its predecessor. It is because the original Xbox was rushed to market it was based on PC components that exacted a cost in bulk and cost for their power and easy adaptation to the roject. Further, the rush caused Microsoft to make a supply deal with Nvidia that became an albatross around the Xbox's neck.

Given another year before launch the original Xbox would likely have been in many ways like a GameCube on steroids. IBM would have been the logical partner for their willingness to offer customization of the PowerPC architecture, and either ATI or Nvidia could have been the GPU partner. At the time of the Xbox's design Nvidia was well along in their plans to produce x86 chipsets and the ability to supply far more than just the graphics solution is what got Nvidia the job. Given more time Microsoft could have lined up other vendor for the audio and motherboard integration functions.

The Xbox was a powerful machine but a bad prospect from the business angle. The legacy of its rush to market is still affecting Microsoft in the difficulty of supporting the library on the newer more rationally designed Xbox 360. When the time came for the Xbox 360 design work it was far more important that it be a viable business proposition. Backward Compatibility was only a bonus if it didn't hinder the engineers' freedom to meet those economic requirements. Considering that they've already gotten about 25% of the Xbox library running on the 360, it appears they made the right choice.

#5

Because it wouldn't help. Microsoft has tools that let them run a game and trace exactly what it does and where it fails under emulation. The BC Team doesn't need to be told what games are doing that doesn't yet work, they need to further refine their replication of the hardware function in question. This requires distinct skill game developers are unlikely to possess.

#18

Would you care to post your resume demonstrating your long experience and intimate knowledge of game console emulation?

What Microsoft is doing as about the most difficult such project in the entire history of console and arcade machine emulation. Look at the history of the most famous emulator, MAME:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME

When the first version became available it was limited to running games from machines that had first hit the arcades more than 15 years earlier. These machines were not computational brutes when new, getting much of their attractiveness from the use of monitors and video driver hardware that was far too expensive for personal computers back then. So in 1997 you had a 32-bit PC running at 100 MHz or greater with SVGA displays emulating arcade machines based on sub-10 MHz 8-bit processors and very simple graphics hardware. An immense gulf in power between the emulation host and target.

Despite this, MAME took years before the gap in years came down to less than a decade and there are still a lot of arcades it cannot handle properly on the fastest PC. MAME doesn't take full advantage of newer PC features such as advanced GPUs and multicore CPUs but it still illustrates that these thing can be a very slow process of trial and error testing. If you look at the history section of the MAME site there were still updates appearing to correct glitches in ancient machines like Asteroids. Not a glitch everyone would notice but there are very dedicated people here.

Console emulators have their history, too. They tend to take better advantage of PC features but mostly face the same difficulty as MAME. One thing they have in common is a tendency to solve many of their problems by brute force. Between the time an emulation project starts and the time it reaches some minor goal like getting a single major title working, the power level of the average PC increases. All too often emulation projects made little progress until the target machine had aged enough that it offered more of a power gap between itself and a run of the mill PC.

A problem has been that with each generation the consoles have been getting closer to the state of the art for their technology. Not only are the machines far more complex than their ancestors, they're also much closer to the processing power of PCs respective to the era. Notably, the most prominent PS2 emulation project has only achieved about the same level of success as Microsoft has on their project, despite the PS2 emu project being far older (as well as the PS2 being older) it has only a little over 200 games playable:
http://www.pcsx2.net/compat.php?p=1&!=$

It isn't surprising the PSone emulation moved a lot faster than PS2 emus. They had a far simpler task.

The Xbox was the most powerful and complex console being sold before the introduction of its successor and thus the most difficult emulation target. It would actually be a lot easier to make an Xbox emulator for a current PC since so much could be mapped directly to the host hardware.

The Microsoft guys have better resources than the DIY groups but the problems faced by both are comparable. Plus Microsoft cannot wait around for more powerful PCs to solve their problems for them. The Xbox 360 spec isn't going to change other than for cost reduction. The performance is set in stone.

What they've achieved in less than a year is excellent by the standard of console emulation projects.

I actually think most people are confused about what Microsoft is trying to do here. They mistake “top selling” for “top” when Microsoft describes which games they are trying to get going.
Nobody cares if a game is fun, original or compelling - if it only sold a few units don’t expect Microsoft to care.
Microsoft have to make the biggest splash they can, and they do that by targeting the games that most people own. Note that I say “the games most people own”, not “the games the whiners on internet forums own”.
Microsoft will aim for the best sellers (or at least the ones without 360 versions), and then cut their losses and run – unless the customers can conjure a particularly compelling reason for them not to.
If your favourite game didn’t sell enough to warrant backwards compatibility you can blame the public who voted with their wallets.

"It's pretty silly to say Microsoft screwed up the design of the Xbox 360. The opposite is true. Far more time and thought went into the 360 than its predecessor. It is because the original Xbox was rushed to market it was based on PC components that exacted a cost in bulk and cost for their power and easy adaptation to the roject. Further, the rush caused Microsoft to make a supply deal with Nvidia that became an albatross around the Xbox's neck."

That's the point. Microsoft screwed up the design by not designing it properly to begin with. They screwed up the design when they tried to strong-arm their suppliers. Therein lies the problem with Microsoft.

Nice long post, little to no realism.

#30

In what way did Microsoft try to strongarm their suppliers? The structure of the deal was a bad situation for both sides. Nvidia was accustomed to sell high end chips to board makers who would charge premium prices. By the time those chips were no longer worth the premium there would be newer chips to take that role.

The Xbox, being a game console, was very cost sensitive from day one. Rather than charging a premium that allowed them to break even or even make a profit on the hardware itself, Microsoft took a loss on each machine to seed the much higher magin software market for the platform. So long as Nvidia was intent on enjoying the same profit as from their current premium product this was an unviable arrangement. The problem was jsut as much Nvidia's fault. They entered the agreement with just as much knoledge of the possible problems as Microsoft. Nvidia could easily have gone for the kind of pricing any console maker would expect and try to make it profitable over the long term rather than short term premium margins.

Your statement in #22 was that they screwed up the design of the 360. This simply isn't true and I explained in detail that the problem lie more with the original Xbox. But even then, saying they screwed up the design is really not correct. The design is fine, it's the related business arrangements that are the problem.

Since the issue had no satisfactory resolution there was no reason to remain bound to the x86 for the 360. PPC is a far more cost effective choice for the application.

When Microsoft approached Nvidia to collaborate on the Xbox neither company had any direct expertise in the console business at the executive levels. They were learning as they went along and trying to do something new they hoped would give the product an advantage. On Microsoft's side there was an anxiousness to reach market no later than a year after the PS2 launch. Nvidia was trying to convince the world that hardware shaders were a must for future game development and very much wanted the glamor of a high profile design win in a heavily promoted product beyond the PC realm. This enthusiasm on both side made it easy for them both to ignore the problems they were going to face.

Such is life. 20/20 hindsight is easy. The Xbox managed to be a pretty good machine that established a strong brand. The mistakes that prevented it from being cost effective are well understood and not being repeated.

Part of that is not bind the Xbox 360 design to that of the Xbox. It makes backward compatibility harder but hasn't been too much of a burden. Already 25% of the Xbox library is running, including most of the bestselling games that matter in the mainstream. The cost for this effort has likely been merely in the hudreds of thousands of dollars, mainly for engineer salaries. I canguarantee you that the I/O chip that also provides PS1 compatibility in the PS2 was a far more expensive project.

If the Xbox 360 backward compatibility supports includes just 50% of the Xbox library within another year, it will have been far less costly that the upfront expenditures Sony made for their hardware solution. That matters quite a lot for a feature used by just a subset of the installed base.

Hey, here's a great idea: Instead of getting a grass-roots petition deal going, how about DoubleFine trying to...oh, i don't know...MAKE ANOTHER GAME?!?
Maybe one that runs on the 360?? Crazy idea, i know...but it's JUST CRAZY ENOUGH TO (maybe) WORK!

epobirs, awesome.

AWESOME TO THE MAX.

I'm glad to see someone else in here who understands it's technology we're dealing with, pretty advanced stuff, at that, and like some have said, assuming they can just 'FLIP A SWITCH' is fucking obsurd.

I also wanted to point out to those with complaints that that Sony does, in fact, also seen to have issues with software emulation for ps2 games on the ps3. It's rumored (and pretty likely) that they'll just include a hardware solution (aka. an entire ps2!) into the first PS3's till their software solution pans out better.

Now for those who think that should be done by MS, you're being rediculous. Including ps2 hardware inside a ps3 isn't as hard because the ps2 is a joke by hardware standards. Putting an xbox inside a 360 simply isn't going to happen.
The two situations are just completely rediculous.

This reminds me of the people who are like, 'The ps3 is 1000 times more powerful than the ps2, but the 360 is only 50 times more powerful'. Well no shit, dumbass. Driving a Geo Metro before upgrading to a Dodge Vipor is gonna be a BIG difference. You were driving a piece of shit before. The xbox was more like a good VW Jetta or Acura, so upgrading to a Corvette won't be near as huge a jump.

Maybe that wasn't a great analogy... but the point is you need to keep things in perspective.

Again, epobirs, you da man.

Cage: I want to play this game and I never owned an original XBOX. The XBOX is dead with few new games coming out; I am not going to spend money on one + peripherals. Peter Moore said that the goal was to have all XBOX games eventually emulated, so I bought a 360 early just like I did a PS2. My PS2 has played every PS1 game I threw at it. I can't say the same for the 360.

Obviously the software emulation is much harder than the way Sony did it on PS2, but MS claimed something would happen and yes there are people out there who care.

hey guys i dont know if im the only one but alan stuart replied to my kidney failer and wrote: "Hmmm, shove my face up my what... that's not a nice thing to say. May your collapsed lung stay collapsed. Just kidding, of course. :)

We are working on Psychonauts. I hope we have it done before you die. :)

Sincerely,

Alan Stuart
Emulation Ninja
Xbox 360 Team


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tell you later [mailto:fffunfarm@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:44 AM
To: Xbox 360 Back Compat
Subject: please, i have kidney failer,


and a collapsed lung from a tragic car accident and my brain needs the stimulation of your creative game pyconauauts!!! please write back. and tell microsoft to shove there face up their ass for all i care. j/k, thanx

yeah! someone famous with millions of dollars wrote to me! man i feel good. well email me if someone else had theirs responded to.