Xbox 360 Emulation on Xbox One
Wow this one is weird. It is a pseudo-rumour. The words came from someone within Microsoft and there has yet to be a formal retraction by the company as far as I'm aware. Granted, the statement promised nothing, so in theory there is nothing to retract. I'm skeptical to say the least.
As I commented in the past, and has been confirmed by Microsoft and numerous other tech experts; building an emulator for another modern architecture is far from simple. So far from simple that Sony opted to build out PS Now (PSN) instead.
But that is exactly what the news is. That Microsoft is mulling over the idea of Xbox 360 emulation within the Xbox One.
I'm not saying it isn't possible. It absolutely is. But it would be an enormous undertaking. Could have a small army of benefits if they pull it off though. This would obviously be superior in many ways to PSN. Existing games you own work immediately, off-line and with no extra hassle. It gives Microsoft a huge library of games it can start to offer through Games Gone Gold or a similar rewards program for Xbox One users. The games will in theory run better without the constraints and concerns surrounding effectively streaming a game. And the list goes on.
All that being said, there is no guarantee such an emulator would even be any good. Emulation can be massively slower than running something on native hardware and the current gen consoles are only a handful of times more powerful than the previous generation. It simply may not be enough. And it isn't just the games running on the hardware that may need to be emulated. Input also needs to be emulated. Since the controller is virtually the same, that isn't a problem. But Kinect has changed a lot, including the SDK, etc.... I don't work for Microsoft, or the company that built the Kinect tech, so I'll admit I could be off on this. But Kinect 2.0 gathers much more rich, higher res images, has an infrared camera and a new SDK. I have to assume the data stream is vastly different from that on the Xbox 360. So, would they need to "dumb" the Kinect data down for a 360 game to be able to handle it? Whether they do or don't, it could be as big a challenge as emulating the rest of the console hardware if they chose to support it.
I would love to see Xbox 360 games supported on the Xbox One. I wasn't a 360 owner, so for me it just means opening up a whole new library of reduced price games. But I'm a pragmatist. I suspect that MS will eventually go the Sony route and offer a cloud based service for prior gen games of some sort. Fiscally it is a smarter move. It can be blocked behind a Gold subscription and/or be tied to a subscription of its own. Also, it means emulation may not be necessary, they could simply have Power PC based servers rendering the games natively. Performance may even be better than attempting to emulate it. Overall, I think it is a win-win if they can get past their own concerns on ping rates.
As I commented in the past, and has been confirmed by Microsoft and numerous other tech experts; building an emulator for another modern architecture is far from simple. So far from simple that Sony opted to build out PS Now (PSN) instead.
But that is exactly what the news is. That Microsoft is mulling over the idea of Xbox 360 emulation within the Xbox One.
I'm not saying it isn't possible. It absolutely is. But it would be an enormous undertaking. Could have a small army of benefits if they pull it off though. This would obviously be superior in many ways to PSN. Existing games you own work immediately, off-line and with no extra hassle. It gives Microsoft a huge library of games it can start to offer through Games Gone Gold or a similar rewards program for Xbox One users. The games will in theory run better without the constraints and concerns surrounding effectively streaming a game. And the list goes on.
All that being said, there is no guarantee such an emulator would even be any good. Emulation can be massively slower than running something on native hardware and the current gen consoles are only a handful of times more powerful than the previous generation. It simply may not be enough. And it isn't just the games running on the hardware that may need to be emulated. Input also needs to be emulated. Since the controller is virtually the same, that isn't a problem. But Kinect has changed a lot, including the SDK, etc.... I don't work for Microsoft, or the company that built the Kinect tech, so I'll admit I could be off on this. But Kinect 2.0 gathers much more rich, higher res images, has an infrared camera and a new SDK. I have to assume the data stream is vastly different from that on the Xbox 360. So, would they need to "dumb" the Kinect data down for a 360 game to be able to handle it? Whether they do or don't, it could be as big a challenge as emulating the rest of the console hardware if they chose to support it.
I would love to see Xbox 360 games supported on the Xbox One. I wasn't a 360 owner, so for me it just means opening up a whole new library of reduced price games. But I'm a pragmatist. I suspect that MS will eventually go the Sony route and offer a cloud based service for prior gen games of some sort. Fiscally it is a smarter move. It can be blocked behind a Gold subscription and/or be tied to a subscription of its own. Also, it means emulation may not be necessary, they could simply have Power PC based servers rendering the games natively. Performance may even be better than attempting to emulate it. Overall, I think it is a win-win if they can get past their own concerns on ping rates.
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