Done with Xbox?

[Tron]

After you've updated your console to the latest OS version (modern game systems don't allow you to do anything online without having the latest firmware installed), your game would've automatically started the download and installation process since it's on the compatibility list.

Getting Xbox 360 games working on the Xbox One was quite a challenge for Microsoft. Only the Xbox 360's GPU is emulated and able to run unchanged Xbox 360 code. The CPU side of Xbox One software is ran through an automatic converter that Microsoft spent a fortune to develop, that translates the PowerPC instructions in 360 software into equivalent X86 based instructions that the Xbox One and Series systems can natively execute.

The stock Xbox One never stood a chance at fully emulating the Xbox 360. So Microsoft took this unusual route to make it possible by partially recompiling Xbox 360 games into Xbox One code that is then downloaded to the system.

While that compromise sadly makes sense, I believe the system must be online afterwards in order to play any installed backwards compatible content (At least that's the case for me, where I can't play installed BC games offline even though my XB1 is set to my home console). Hard to excuse that silliness.

Microsoft is brilliant to think of all that and pull it off. Too bad they weren’t brilliant enough to make the system just be backwards compatible right out of the box. For some reason I think they could’ve done that too, but didn’t because it goes against their mission statement, {Get every Mofo online at all costs!}.

[Atariboy]

That would've meant sticking with PowerPC in a world dominated by x86 (PC's, Playstation 4, etc.) or shoehorning in the 360's CPU just to enable backwards compatibility.

Building it into every Xbox One just for the sake of enabling backwards compatibility would've increased the price of the system, likely would have been eliminated a few years into the generation in a cost cutting move (much like how the PS3 killed off PS2 support), and I suspect would've been a major roadblock for the many improvements seen in 360 games on Xbox One and Series systems that were made possible by the route MS took.

So I suspect they did the right thing in going x86 with the Xbox One in a world dominated by x86 outside of mobile devices, but what I don't understand is why original Xbox backwards compatibility has been handled how it was. The few games from the small selection that they secured permission for all look and perform great, but why must they be recompiled and downloaded?

Doing so essentially turns them into Xbox One games and by extension brings legal nonsense like licensing into play, guaranteeing little of interest would ever be made BC (which proved to be the case with few exceptions). Yet the original Xbox ran on a x86 based Pentium III CPU and used a Nvidia GeForce 3 based GPU.

I would think it would be near trivial to just let us pop in any original Xbox disc and play it directly, bypassing the recompiling into XB1 compatible game code nonsense.

[BlasteroidAli]

It is a superb console. Most updates for Series X and S are free. Where as they cost £5 on playstation. Think about that for a moment.