Microsoft has announced, via the weblog of staffer Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb, that a new backward compatibility update is now available for the Xbox 360, allowing those with both an Xbox 360, an original Xbox game, and connectivity to Xbox Live to play improved or new emulations of Xbox titles.
According to Hryb, and extrapolating from the
full list of backward compatible games, the brand new titles now functioning on an Xbox 360 include Criterion's 'gun porn' FPS
Black, LucasArts' multiplayer sales hit
Star Wars Battlefront II, and Konami's ever-popular soccer title
World Soccer Winning Eleven 9.
In addition, titles which now sport 'improved' emulation, presumably fixing glitches and other issues previously seen in their BC versions, include
Darkwatch, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, Fable, Fable: The Lost Chapters, Forza Motorsport, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, SSX 3 Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, kill.switch, and
World Series Baseball 2K3.
The
original list of 212 backward compatible games was announced last November, and has been added to significantly. But the extreme complexity of making some games work on the new hardware (and the effort needed to work on emulation for low-selling original Xbox titles) likely means that a number of original Xbox games will never work on Xbox 360.
