Heard it was this way a while back, but I' m actually quite surprised that Microsoft won' t allow devs to make their own games compatable themselves.

We' d absolutely love it if our Burnout games worked on 360," said Ward, " but it' s down to what Microsoft wants to do. It controls and decides what games its emulator works with. I' ve actually asked them four times myself for them to make it happen, but it' s really not up to us.

Criterion in an interview with Eurogamer.

and

Backwards compatibility is not something that works from our code - rather Microsoft has developed a software emulator that should make this happen at some point in the future. Should that be the case, it will be downloaded on Live or by visiting the Xbox.com website. I think at the moment the emulator doesn' t work with all games but Microsoft say they are going to fix it so everything works eventually. So we don' t know really; it' s out of our hands.

From an interview with Sumo digital about OutRun 2006 at UK Resistance.

This whole thing really does suck. Surely it would be in Mircosoft' s interest to allow developers to code their own emulation software, which would then easily be intergrated with Microsoft' s own, much like a Windows patch.

Take new releases like Black. The amount of people willing to shell out for an Xbox has diminished greatly since the launch of the 360, and since 360 owners are currently starved for games it would make perfect sense. Even more so for those who just don' t want to play stuff like Ghost Recon or The Outfit, which were coming out, but rather OutRun 2006 for the orig Xbox.

What do guys think, because for me I hate having to get my chunky old Xbox back out just to play new games, mainly because the RGB output is so blurry compared to the other consoles (In UK Xbox' s Microsoft added a softening effect to combat jaggies in interlaced mode 480i, and you have no access to 480p through the first XB without modding).