Looking Forward to Backward Compatibility
I usually open by lamenting how long it has been since my last post, but since the established pattern shows no signs deviation, I think I'm willing to let my current frequency of pontification now be considered simply as the status quo. Like my mother used to say, "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit." Maybe this is just as good as it gets.
On to gaming news, I've got a few things I want to cover. First off, through a strange set of circumstances, I'm now the owner of an XBOX 360. I mention a "strange set of circumstances" only to imply that I would never have gone out and bought the thing retail. Nothing against the 360 - it's a nice piece of kit, but I am already awash in opportunities to while away what little free time I have. I actually can't waste time fast enough at this point. Still, this was one of those deals where a friend who had already owned a 360 somehow fell into a second one for free. I'm not sure what kind of bastardly, deal-with-the-devil luck he enjoys, but the upshot was the he was willing to unload it for cheap.
It's always interesting to make a purchase like this that with no prior research. I had no idea what titles were out or what is coming down the pipe, so it came as somewhat of an unhappy surprise for me when I rolled into Best Buy to discover that there were only a couple of dozen games out for the 360, and of those only a couple of them held any real interest for me. I ended up standing there with a game in each hand: Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter vs.Tomb Raider: Legends. (Oblivion would have been on the list as well, but I already have it on the PC.) I ended up going with G.R.A.W., and I must admit, I haven't been disappointed. While the game itself has an entirely different feel from it predicessors, it captures the essence of the series perfectly, all while feeling much more at home on a console controller than anything that has come before it.
Luckly, not having owned the original XBOX, I'm also having some fun going back to play some of the stellar first-gen titles. It's a damn shame that Microsoft's backwards compatibility is as shabby as it is, a fact that is causing no small hullaballoo this week. There are plenty of guys out there posting on boards wondering why anyone even cares about backwards compatibility - let me paint a little picture for you:
First, we have the XBOX 360 entering the next-generation market a full year earlier and a few hundered dollars cheaper than the PS3, which makes it a pretty compelling purchase. At the same time, true next-gen titles are slow in coming, because developers are afraid to invest dollars into an expensive next-gen title when there is only a single platform to ship said title to. The combination of these two factors means that while Microsoft may be first to market, they are having a difficult time rapidly building a stable of triple-A titles, which in turn makes it harder to attract new buyers. Backwards compatibility at least gives you a gigantic library to help get new buyers through the lean lauch years.
Odds are, if you bought the original XBOX, sooner or later you will buy also buy the XBOX 360. But, if you passed on the orignal XBOX, and we know many, many gamers have, robust backwards compatibility may just the ticket to get you to switch sides. I know for a fact it helped me. The prospect of playing the Halo, Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden and Jade Empire greatly helped justify the purchase... I'm just disappointed that I can't also play MechAssault, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and Panzer Dragoon Orta. My point is simply this: As counter-intuitive as it may seem, I think XBOX 360 backwards compatibility is more important as a marketing tool to those buyers that are new to the XBOX fold than it is to first-generation system owners.
That being said, Microsoft just today announced their next wave of backwards compatible titles. Needless to say, I'm non-plussed. This list is, for the most part, a mountain of shit.
On to gaming news, I've got a few things I want to cover. First off, through a strange set of circumstances, I'm now the owner of an XBOX 360. I mention a "strange set of circumstances" only to imply that I would never have gone out and bought the thing retail. Nothing against the 360 - it's a nice piece of kit, but I am already awash in opportunities to while away what little free time I have. I actually can't waste time fast enough at this point. Still, this was one of those deals where a friend who had already owned a 360 somehow fell into a second one for free. I'm not sure what kind of bastardly, deal-with-the-devil luck he enjoys, but the upshot was the he was willing to unload it for cheap.
It's always interesting to make a purchase like this that with no prior research. I had no idea what titles were out or what is coming down the pipe, so it came as somewhat of an unhappy surprise for me when I rolled into Best Buy to discover that there were only a couple of dozen games out for the 360, and of those only a couple of them held any real interest for me. I ended up standing there with a game in each hand: Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter vs.Tomb Raider: Legends. (Oblivion would have been on the list as well, but I already have it on the PC.) I ended up going with G.R.A.W., and I must admit, I haven't been disappointed. While the game itself has an entirely different feel from it predicessors, it captures the essence of the series perfectly, all while feeling much more at home on a console controller than anything that has come before it.
Luckly, not having owned the original XBOX, I'm also having some fun going back to play some of the stellar first-gen titles. It's a damn shame that Microsoft's backwards compatibility is as shabby as it is, a fact that is causing no small hullaballoo this week. There are plenty of guys out there posting on boards wondering why anyone even cares about backwards compatibility - let me paint a little picture for you:
First, we have the XBOX 360 entering the next-generation market a full year earlier and a few hundered dollars cheaper than the PS3, which makes it a pretty compelling purchase. At the same time, true next-gen titles are slow in coming, because developers are afraid to invest dollars into an expensive next-gen title when there is only a single platform to ship said title to. The combination of these two factors means that while Microsoft may be first to market, they are having a difficult time rapidly building a stable of triple-A titles, which in turn makes it harder to attract new buyers. Backwards compatibility at least gives you a gigantic library to help get new buyers through the lean lauch years.
Odds are, if you bought the original XBOX, sooner or later you will buy also buy the XBOX 360. But, if you passed on the orignal XBOX, and we know many, many gamers have, robust backwards compatibility may just the ticket to get you to switch sides. I know for a fact it helped me. The prospect of playing the Halo, Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden and Jade Empire greatly helped justify the purchase... I'm just disappointed that I can't also play MechAssault, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and Panzer Dragoon Orta. My point is simply this: As counter-intuitive as it may seem, I think XBOX 360 backwards compatibility is more important as a marketing tool to those buyers that are new to the XBOX fold than it is to first-generation system owners.
That being said, Microsoft just today announced their next wave of backwards compatible titles. Needless to say, I'm non-plussed. This list is, for the most part, a mountain of shit.
