Want a Back-Compat PS3 in Tokyo? Pay Up [Game|Life]

The list covers the new 1.6 firmware revision, so some of the titles the Inquirer tested are now listed as fully compatible, such as God of War and Shadow of the Colossus.

While the list is by no means complete, it still represents a sizeable chunk of the previous systems' libraries, roughly 72%, and with updates that figure is guaranteed to grow. It's already much better than the 360, which wouldn't let me play Armed and Dangerous this weekend, a mortal sin if I ever heard one. Michael Fahey

Euro PS3 Backwards Compatibility Page - Thanks Jon!

Sony's finally come out with some good news for the UK: First party Playstation 3 titles will sell for EUR 59.99 / GBP 39.99 at launch, or GBP 10 less than Xbox 360 games, Games Industry reports.

Launch titles will include Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Genji, Ridge Racer 7 and Formula One Championship Edition. The games will sell for AUD 99.95 and NZD 109.95, so not such good news for Luke, I think.

Fahey points out that while the suggested retail price for 360 games may be 49.99 pounds, some retailers sell them at the 39.99 price point anyway. This, of course, could also happen with PS3 titles, since we're only taking retail suggested.

Downloadable content will start at EUR 0.99.

SCEE boss David Reeves commented, "Not only will it be completely free to register on the PlayStation Network with no subscription fees and access to many free demos, but with these competitive prices for additional content we are able to offer the consumer both top quality games on Blu-ray discs and a whole range of downloadable content.

"With over 30 first and third party disc and network games available at launch, we are confident that this will be one of the most successful launches of all time."

How much this will make up for the PS3's gimpy backward compatibility is still up in the air. Which would you rather have, full backward compatibility or cheaper PS3 titles? Brian Crecente

Sony announces prices for first-party PS3 games [Games Industry]

Everyone's favorite lippy Microsoft blogger Ozymandias offers his two cents on the gimped backwards compatibility for the PAL PLAYSTATION 3. He writes:

Remember the PS3 price cut I predicted back in January? This is likely a step on that path. I believe the PS3 enabled backward compatibility by basically including PS2 silicon in the box. That hardware has likely been removed to reduce costs, and the PS3 is now moving toward software-emulated backward compatibility. Notice the new focus on firmware upgrades for enabling backcompat? ...All of which means the backcompat story is likely to be very similar between the PS3 and the 360 going forward.

Interesting theory. Brian Ashcraft

Ozy On PS3 BC Reduction [Ozymandias]

Backwards compatibility is a tricky thing. Seems so simple: Make the new machine so it can play old games. But, alas, difficult. According to one reader, the Nintendo Wii joins the ranks of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 as yet another console that can't quite get its BC on.

Kotakuite Chris writes:

I popped Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour into my Wii. It started loading my saved data off the memory card, but stopped in the middle of it, and displayed this message: "An error has occured. Please turn the power off and refer to the Nintendo GameCube instruction booklet for more information."

I tried switching memory cards, and got the same message. I tried having no memory card inserted, and after selecting to continue without saving, got the same message. I plugged my GameCube back in, and tried the same thing with the same disc, and it all worked perfectly fine.

Chris says GC titles Smash Bros. and Viewtiful Joe come up kosher on the Wii. Anyone else having BC issues or just this dude? Brian Ashcraft

Want to play your original xbox games on your new Xbox 360?

Backward compatibility on the Xbox 360 is done through software*

Let Circuit City install it for you
For just $28.99

What are the benefits to playing original Xbox games on my Xbox 360 console?

• Every game* will be playable in high definition.
• Every original Xbox game* will be upscaled to 720p and 1080i, and will take advantage of Xbox 360's anti-aliasing capabilities, delivering a picture that is clear and crisper than anything available on Xbox.

*Refer to the original Xbox games list to ensure compatibility on the Xbox 360.

Not sure where to start with this scam to fleece unsuspecting customers, but "Fuck you Circuit City" will do for now. This unscrupulous retailer is trying to convince customers, who sadly do not know better, that this is a service they need—much like extended warranties and aftercare. Backward compatibility isn't even something that Circuit City can really install! I guess they can, but it updates over Xbox Live. And if you don't have an internet connection, Microsoft will happily send you the backward compatibility software, which users can easily install themselves.

Circuit City is using asterisks to cover their false promises, luring customers and failing to point out a distinct point: Xbox games playing on an Xbox 360 look the same on an analog TV. An HD TV is necessary to give Xbox games that next-gen look. And customers smart enough to know this and refer to Microsoft's BC list are definitely smart enough not to fall for Circuit City's scam. Open season on the other shoppers, though. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Circuit City]

Trolls. You may know one or be one yourself. Their sole pleasure is to provoke—not thought, but emotion. At PAX, Microsoft's Major "Larry" Nelson himself bemoaned the quality of posts on his site, and him getting trolled is nothing new. He recently posted the growing list of backwards compatible games, receiving a whopping 400-plus comments. We don't like to post comments from other sites, because our own trolls will bitch about it "not being news," Kotakuite german S> dropped us a line about a comment he found on the Major's blog:

I was browsing the Major Nelson blog, reading the barf of reader comments (mostly requests for unsupported games) on the entry regarding the recently announced new batch of supported games for the backwards compatible list, when I noticed this surprisingly eloquent string of responses from poster Zaiten. He openly accused Microsoft of endorsed business agendas with an aparent arbitrarily picking of games that are to be supported and left out of the Backwards Compatibility list.

Is this a cry in the wilderness or text book trolling? Hit the jump, read Zaiten's comments and decide for yourself.

It doesn't take much effort to notice that the Microsoft XBOX division does not want to disclose the real reasons behind their arbitrary approach to Backwards Compatibility on the XBOX 360. For one, they don't seem to give a flip about the Japanese segment of the XBOX library. There is sure to be some corporate reasoning behind it, heck, maybe these guys are right to blame debugging for the mediocre results; but I have different theories myself: 1- Japanese-developed games released on the XBOX were woefully poor in the US, thus efforts to emulating such games are pointless. 2- Microsoft has refrained from supporting certain games whose sequels are on the XBOX 360. 3- The utter failure of the XBOX in Japan is the #1 reason for neglecting the Asian-specific releases.

Let's look at the numbers first. NINJA GAIDEN, considered a milestone of the last generation, sold 550.000 copies. DEAD OR ALIVE 3, also critically acclaimed, sold 950.000 copies; both are backwards compatible. On the other hand, SEGA games PANZER DRAGOON ORTA, SHENMUE II, GUN VALKYRIE, OTOGI, JET SET RADIO, and CRAZY TAXI barely reached half a million units, and that's added together. You bet they're not supported on the XBOX 360. Konami's SILENT HILL 2&3, MGS2: Substance, and BLOODY ROAR; Capcom's DINO CRISIS 3, STEEL BATALLION, and CAPCOM CLASSICS COLLECTION are neither compatible. All of the aforementioned titles are ironically considered high quality games, top of the cream. Well, that didn't save them from being axed off the supported games list.

It seems that Project Gotham Racing (which sold 1,200.000 units) and PGR2 (platinum also) are not supported due to particular business convenience. PGR3 is a mere visual upgrade over its predecessor so there is no excuse whatsoever for either PGR1&2 to be technologically incompatible with the XBOX 360. What's even more, you guys said "the top-selling games" would be first in the BC list, so where are platinum-selling PGR1&2? So much for boosting sales of a gimmicky 360 title, don't you think? Furthermore, there's DEAD OR ALIVE ULTIMATE, one of the top XBOX LIVE games. It was critically acclaimed yet it's not supported. I believe that, perhaps it was so popular it might have hurt the sales of its next-gen sibling DEAD OR ALIVE 4. Same with STREET FIGHTER ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION and its Live Arcade twin. In fact the same phenomenon can be tracked for various 360 sports titles whose XBOX predecessors are deliberately not backwards compatible, as is the case with TOP SPIN and FIFA SOCCER.

I still find it puzzling that the XBOX division would choose to blatantly ignore emulation support for such myriad of Japanese games. It is so bad in fact that I feel urged to suggest that Microsoft is doing it on purpose to somewhat retaliate against the Japanese market for shunning the XBOX into oblivion for the past 5 years. Ok, so that may be a bit of an overstatement. After all, western-developed masterpieces have been equally dismissed, as is the case with DEUS EX, CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, MECHASSAULT, TOP SPIN, FULL SPECTRUM WARRIOR and PSYCHONUTS. The truth of the matter is, mostly everyone is simply disappointed, we feel that we've been deceived and cheated on by the mockery that is the Backwards Compatibility of the XBOX 360.

Some of you guys shamelessly condescend to Microsoft for failing over and over again to deliver on their promise. When more than 60% of the XBOX exclusives (90 totals) are not playable on the XBOX 360, calling that "Backwards Compatibility" should be criminal. My point is that we could care less about your ineffective efforts to improve this broken and impractical feature. You're a year too late and the damage is already done. Believe it or not, many an XBOX fan did not actually believe XBOX equaled HALO. We stuck to the exclusive titles that developed the XBOX identity through the years and won our genuine support.

Last year many sold their XBOX in anticipation of the upcoming XBOX 360, only to find in dismay —right after release— that almost none of the top rated games were supported by said next-gen system. Here's hoping Microsoft revamps the original XBOX console (darn if it could use some hardware shrinking and slicking) because that is the only Microsoft-manufactured console I would deign to acquire. If only you had been honest with us, Microsoft, we could still believe you did actually care about the games, your customers, and the creative heritage of this industry.

And what was the response to this diatribe? The next three comments were: "Excellent list!", "Still no Fifa 2006 then :-(" and "No Metal gear??" Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Major Nelson]

The PlayStation 3 maybe shaped like a Victorian waffle-iron on the outside, but the inside's a different story together. That machine is no simpleton. It's involved. It's complex.

That's not all. According to IBM, the console's Cell's maker, Sony is being super strict about backwards compatibility and not shirking it in the least.

Sony is very concerned about quality and backward compatibility. They want to get this right. They tested game after game after game. When there were about 40 Playstation 1 games that didn't work properly, that didn't pass their criteria for quality.

Too bad they don't have the same criteria for pricing. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Electronic News] via Kikizo

After Peter Moore's 24-inch guns apologized for boneheaded backwards compatibility remarks, we know that Microsoft cares about BC. But, does Msoft care about BC?

CheapyD does. He also has loads of free time. So after getting up at 2:00 PM and shopping for new socks, he started crunching numbers, finding the facts and trying to see how much Microsoft cares about backwards compat. Cheapy writes:

With the latest backwards compatibility update occurring this week, I thought it might be interesting to see how many of the best reviewed Xbox games are backwards compatible on the Xbox 360.

I took the 300 best reviewed Xbox games as scored by Metacritic (a website that collates reviews) and then checked to see which games are backwards compatible on the Xbox 360.

Of the top 300 reviewed Xbox games, 82 (or 27%) are backwards compatible.
Of the 21 new additions to the the bc list, 8 are in the top 300 best reviewed list.

Well, don't look at it like only 27% of games are backwards compatible, because that's a small figure. No, think that 73% of them aren't BC. Because bigger numbers are better. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [CAG]

Boss older brother site Gizmodo chucked the updated Xbox 360 compatibility update in our general direction. Twenty-one more original Xbox titles join a list of over 200 working games. They are:

4x4 EVO 2, Amped 2, Bad Boys 2, Big Mutha Truckers, DOOM 3, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Fatal Frame, FlatOutTM, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Intellivision Lives, LEGO Star Wars, Minority Report, MLB SlugFest 20-04, The Punisher, RalliSport Challenge, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Spawn Armageddon, Spider-Man, Star Wars BattlefrontTM, State of Emergency, Zapper

It's things like this that prove without a doubt that the Xbox 360 is the finest next-gen console currently on the market. Bar none. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Gizmodo]

Earlier this month, Microsoft's Peter Moore and his 24-inch guns infamously said that "Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility." We were left wondering if Moore had been spending more time in the gym and less with gamers. That, or if we was really, really drunk. Or taken over by Sony pod people.

On Major Nelson's podcast, Moore ate crow and even apologized for his boneheaded remark. His 24-inch guns also said that people took "concerned" to mean "cared." Uh, taking it to mean "worried" is better? How about "involved"?

He then said his words caused "trauma" for some (now, that is power), and that he was sorry "for all the trauma I caused the gaming community." Backtracking, Moore then stated, "It's quite simply not that we don't care about backward compat. Boy, do we care about backward compat... We're going to get darn close to that stated goal of every title done."

A new update will hit in about a week and will feature support for twenty titles. Until then, Peter Moore will continue to apologize. And pump iron. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GameDaily BIZ]

I'm most excited about Black making the list of new games I can play on my 360.

New Games
BLACK
Star Wars Battlefront II
World Soccer Winning Eleven 9

Updated Games
Darkwatch
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Half-Life 2
Fable
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Forza Motorsport
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden Black
SSX 3
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
kill.switch
World Series Baseball 2K3