SoccerDude28 Posted June 8, 2005 Here " Microsoft's company management has recently stated that the Xbox 360 would be backwards compatible with "most top-selling Xbox games." They also stated that Microsoft would support the Xbox well into 2006. However, since the current Xbox uses an Nvidia chipset as a graphics processor, as opposed to the new ATI chipset, some have expressed concerns about the backwards compatibility of the Xbox 360. Recently, Microsoft has explained and clarified the current situation. Microsoft has actually agreed to pay Nvidia a small royalty in order to allow the ATI chipset on the Xbox 360 to emulate the Nvidia chipset's performance in reading certain Xbox games. The term 'certain' is used because currently only single-layered games will be emulated well with this hardware. For multi-layered games, there requires a further emulation in the form of 'patches' that Microsoft intends to include with the hard drive packaged along with the Xbox 360. One can assume that most Xbox games will be playable by the Xbox 360 in this way, but not all. However, Microsoft has promised that further patches will be added in case customer demand warrants the action." Pretty good news. But what are single-layered vs multi-layered games, and how many multi-layered games are out there? Anyone knows? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Aussie Ben Posted June 8, 2005 Hmmm...well, according to a website I googled, a Single Layer DVD can be classified as follows: DVD-5, holds around 4 700 000 000 bytes and that is 4.37 computer GB where 1 kbyte is 1024 bytes* . DVD+R/DVD+RW and DVD-R/DVD-RW supports this format. Also called Single Sided Single Layered. This is the most common DVD Media, often called 4.7 GB Media. With a nifty modded Xbox, I was able to discover that Psychonauts (really, this is the only game we care about here, isn't it? I know it is for me.) is about 3.9 gig, just under the 4.37 gig limit for a Single Layer DVD. So, it looks like that should work quite nicely. Of course, this is all guesswork, and presuming that the Xbox uses standard DVDs, and not some kind of wacky proprietary DVD that has a 3.8 gig Single Layer DVD or something equally ridiculous. (I think the chances of that are pretty slim - proprietary formats tend to be larger than the regular format.) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Twilo Posted June 8, 2005 This is pretty much in line with their statement that "in time" all the back catalogue would be compatible. Hooray for nVidia for being such good sports. Sneaking the patches in on the harddrive is a rather canny move; not everyone is going to be happy about going online to get the patches. Not that we mind. We're all getting mod chips anyway, right? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lailoken Posted June 8, 2005 Did everyone get the memo on the change of naming conventions???? WTF!!! I sure as hell didn't and it is sickening to me! I STUDIED COMPUTERSCIENCES AND LEARNED THIS STUFF THE HARD WAY!!! So maybe there was a memo somewhere but shouldn't there have been a vote?!?! If there had been one, I would have given it a clear NON [linkage] Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
spaceship789 Posted June 11, 2005 Did everyone get the memo on the change of naming conventions????WTF!!! I sure as hell didn't and it is sickening to me! I STUDIED COMPUTERSCIENCES AND LEARNED THIS STUFF THE HARD WAY!!! So maybe there was a memo somewhere but shouldn't there have been a vote?!?! If there had been one, I would have given it a clear NON [linkage] Thats right, the commodore 64 now has 65.5 K of ram. cool! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Marek Posted June 11, 2005 Try saying mebibyte ten times in a row. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
