Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

[AvalancheDiode]

Rumor has it that M$ has been working on a top secret emulator of XBOX 360 on Win8.

Given the actual processing power of modern and up-coming x86-64 CPUs, this is very possible. Actually, it is even possible to emulate the whole XBOX 360 on high-end graphics cards.

Although XBOX 360 hardware is now a profitable business for M$, new machines are not selling well due to market saturation. Thus, the revenue of XBOX department mostly comes from game sales and monthly fee of XBOX Live.

For PC gaming, this is both good and bad news. The Good news is self-evident.

But the bad news is that, in the future, the developers may have very little incentive to develop PC version of games, or games that run specifically on OpenGL/CL and/or DirectX 10/11.

[stilla-killa]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

That and the Xbox 360 has pretty much ran its course.

[Stryker]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Microsoft wants to see if PC gamers are willing to "pay to play" and guess what...where not.

[LunaTiK TunaLiK]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Well, consoles will be old news during our life time so..

[Vreki]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Well, consoles will be old news during our life time so..

You think? I expect it to go the other way.
*Tablets / Muldimediacenters for surfing and lightweight apps.
*Citrix like solutions for standard office work
*Consoles for gaming
And the powerful Personal Computer will only be found as workstation for Engineers, Developers etc.

If I dropped PC gaming, all my computer needs could be filled for a quarter of the price in hardware, and completely free in software.

[jimykx]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

You think? I expect it to go the other way.
*Tablets / Muldimediacenters for surfing and lightweight apps.
*Citrix like solutions for standard office work
*Consoles for gaming
And the powerful Personal Computer will only be found as workstation for Engineers, Developers etc.

If I dropped PC gaming, all my computer needs could be filled for a quarter of the price in hardware, and completely free in software.

i just hope those consoles come with a mouse and keyboard

[Kylee!]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Yea, as long as I can play games with a mouse and keyboard I'll be happy.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Well the PS3 did support USB mice and keybs from the get go; MS later made a patch so the Xbox can do it too; it's just developers never bothered to make it a widespread option (harder to make a keyboard peripheral that is competitive and overly priced) and only a handful of games support the keyboard and mouse as peripherals; even tough you can use them to browse the net through the PS3.

The next generation consoles could go that route instead; become dedicated gaming machinea and entertainment platforms, and be cross-compatible with the pure PC version of games and software; the biggest drawback current consoles had at launch: ie- RAM and video capabilities can be implemented inexpensibly now; the next gen console should have at least 6 GB of system RAM and the equivalent of a radeon 6870 or Geforce 560ti and be relevant for another 6 years.
Hard drives have proved their worth over in the console world, so much that even MS ditched the idea of a custom hard drive and went the Sony way allowing for laptop-like standard SATA II disk drives of any size.

It really just depends on them, Blue Ray became the standard; it's even affordable to have a player on PC nowadays and current videocards even from th ebudget range can decode HD content effortlesly.

It's just a matter of seeing wich of the three companies decides to take the first step; the Wii U is already a joke as it barely surpasses the current PS3/360 graphical abilities and is relying on its gimmicky tablet like controller; but it might change if Sony or MS announce a new console configuration.

[Lordsethonan]

Re: Windows 8 may support XBOX 360 games?

Also about market saturation: this generation of consoles has been the longest so far; with all three companies implying they want to run it for as long as possible; the 360 has barely surpassed the PS2 lifetime on the market and that thing was only discontinued from production a couple of years ago; but the PS2 was a beast of a console for its time and it completely crushed both the gamecube and the original xbox; even tough it had arguably worse graphical capabilities.
The 360 has run its course completely, the red ring of death issue branded it as an unreliable console; there is also the Live outages from time to time and the fact that graphically and content wise, it maxed out some 3 years ago; even among consolers there is this prevalent sentiment of "where is the next big thing". In my opinion the descition of relaunching the 360 with the motion thingy is baffling to say theleast, as they could have implemented it for a next generation console and benefit from the better specs.