Xbox 360 games in Windows 8 - should we pay attention to this rumour?

[Tinman]

Xbox 360 playable on Windows 8 rumours – is it possible?

The rumour mill is keeping the dream alive, but how viable is it?

[TheAvenged87]

Look, the idea of this is pretty awesome. This can extend the lifetime of these games and also expose them to a wider audience (people who don't own consoles). The big spanner in the works here will definitely be the hardware. Sure, if the emulator runs on a decent rig, there will be no issues. Not all people have decent rigs though. This will make it choppy and sometimes unplayable. The Xbox games are made specifically for that console, so graphic settings (to scale it up or down) are basically non-existent in this case. How this will cope is beyond me at this point in time.

[Blackhand]

Its technically feasible using something akin to a 360 virtual machine, the 360 OS is pretty lightweight.

However, just because its possible doesn't mean they will. I don't see why they would want to. Maybe one day when the 360 is off the market it would make sense, why would they want to cannibalize their own market now?

I think the source of the rumor is probably just looking for page hits.

[Toxin]

Look, the idea of this is pretty awesome. This can extend the lifetime of these games and also expose them to a wider audience (people who don't own consoles). The big spanner in the works here will definitely be the hardware. Sure, if the emulator runs on a decent rig, there will be no issues. Not all people have decent rigs though. This will make it choppy and sometimes unplayable. The Xbox games are made specifically for that console, so graphic settings (to scale it up or down) are basically non-existent in this case. How this will cope is beyond me at this point in time.

I guess the emulator itself might use some resources but I don't know if you'd need a decent rig by current standards. The Xbox is getting a bit long in the tooth now and the graphics card, from what I've heard, is equivalent to a 7800/7900GTX.

I'm sure that you could get away with very cheap rig.

[Dan]

An interesting moral dilemma for console-bashing PC fanboys indeed.

[MOnk]

"Then of course there is the possibility that Microsoft will release a separate “Xbox Live for PC” version of every Xbox 360 game..."

You know what they call that, A PC GAME.

I'm sorry this whole concept is stupid. Why would I want to pay R200+ more for a game and then run it on emulated hardware, that defeats the entire purpose of a console. Technically it doesn't take much to turn an Xbox game into a PC game, design considerations aside. Not to mention you would be blowing the cost saving factor of console hardware RIGHT out the water since the rig you would need to emulate 360 hardware would far outstrip even the most high-end gaming PC's, so you would be paying 2-3 times that of a high-end gaming PC just so you can run a game looking WORSE than it would if you just played a 'proper' PC game on that same machine.

So to sum up;

• We would be telling developers "It's fine don't design for PC, we'll just play it like a console game."
• We would pay R200-R300 more for a game because of royalties for a platform we don't actually use.
• We would need to spend 5x more for a system to emulate a game than we would have to spend on a system to play a native game, and have that emulated game looking worse than the native game.

I'm not exactly seeing the plus side here. If they want us to play Halo on our PC's then they must release it natively for PC not some emulated kak.

[afsrav]

I agree. The idea is great; especially for those exclusive xbox titles. Although I also think that it seems highly unlikely that Microsoft will allow people to play Xbox 360 games on PC. Microsoft will loose out on a lot of revenue; unless they recover this cost from selling the emulator software. Might even help selling copies of Windows 8.

[Grievous]

Ok, i read, unreliable rumour from someone who knows someone who works at MS. (Yeah rediculous, but no better than the info been currently thrown around). Anyway, apparently how its going to work. You can buy you xbox game, the disk won't actually work on your Windows 8 machine. You will just get a license to download a pc version of the game (Since xbox live and windows live are merging). But heres the kicker, to play say the windows version of the game, your xbox will have to be online as well, so MS can check you are not playing the xbox version. You are not going to be allowed to play both versions at the same time.

[Blackhand]

"Then of course there is the possibility that Microsoft will release a separate “Xbox Live for PC” version of every Xbox 360 game..."

You know what they call that, A PC GAME.

I'm sorry this whole concept is stupid. Why would I want to pay R200+ more for a game and then run it on emulated hardware, that defeats the entire purpose of a console. Technically it doesn't take much to turn an Xbox game into a PC game, design considerations aside. Not to mention you would be blowing the cost saving factor of console hardware RIGHT out the water since the rig you would need to emulate 360 hardware would far outstrip even the most high-end gaming PC's, so you would be paying 2-3 times that of a high-end gaming PC just so you can run a game looking WORSE than it would if you just played a 'proper' PC game on that same machine.

So to sum up;

• We would be telling developers "It's fine don't design for PC, we'll just play it like a console game."
• We would pay R200-R300 more for a game because of royalties for a platform we don't actually use.
• We would need to spend 5x more for a system to emulate a game than we would have to spend on a system to play a native game, and have that emulated game looking worse than the native game.

I'm not exactly seeing the plus side here. If they want us to play Halo on our PC's then they must release it natively for PC not some emulated kak.

I agree with all of this except the last point. I suspect that the games would run natively (assuming this is true, which I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt it is), the whole idea wouldn't be feasible otherwise. 5 years from now the games would still chug on the most advanced systems if everything was being emulated and dumped on the CPU.

Remember MS has access to all the resources (their own VM software, drivers, the whole 360 architecture and operating system), its not like an outside party trying to fudge it to work through a "brute force" emulator.

Still though, strategically I can't fathom why they would do this.

[Grievous]

I agree with all of this except the last point. I suspect that the games would run natively (assuming this is true, which I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt it is).

Confused, you suspect it will, but highly doubt it?