| For supported games this works incredibly well, and I imagine there's probably no technical reason it couldn't be made to work for all 360 and Xbox OG games. However, it doesn't appear to come for free in terms of effort: I don't believe there's a kind of universal emulation layer that supports every game. When you put in a game disc for a support Xbox or 360 game the console doesn't install the game direct from the disc but rather downloads a compatible version from Microsoft. The disc simply proves that you own the game (and you still have to insert it every time you want to play the game). This has some advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is that the downloaded version could include enhancements like better visuals, sound effects, bug fixes, etc., and plenty of games on the backwards compatibility list do include some level of enhancement. The obvious disadvantage is that you can't just play any old game you might own. I don't know why Microsoft haven't implemented some sort of universal backwards compatibility directly into the consoles but obviously they have their reasons. The fact that the games are downloaded rather than installed from disc throws up another issue: licensing. It will never be the case that all games are supported through backwards compatibility due to content licensing issues (effectively Microsoft are redistributing content because of the way compatibility works). Similarly, some games ship with altered content due to licensing issues. One fairly well know example here is GTA: San Andreas, where the soundtrack differs quite significantly from the version on the disc. The best way to play GTA: San Andreas on a console if you want to experience it as originally intended still remains original PS2 or Xbox hardware or, if you have one that works still, earlier models of PS3 that included PS2 backwards compatibility (this was removed in later revisions). |