Xbox 360 Games On Original Xbox Options

[andytjuh]

Hello i have an question
Are there any program's or emulators for the xbox
So i can play xbox 360 games on the original xbox

Thank you

[Heimdall]

Don't be an idiot. An emulator requires more processing power than the original platform, not less.

[robot3]

Don't be an idiot. An emulator requires more processing power than the original platform, not less.

Actually sort of related, I was always wondering and this is all hypothetical of course, but in the early days of the 360 were any games made for it that technically could have run on a regular xbox? Like in the sense of if they programmed whatever game for the xbox instead of using 360 code (and without adding/ downgrading any graphics and such), that the regular xbox would have been able to run it? As with any system it can take a bit before the games are made to take advantage of said system, but in the early days of the 360, I really wonder how many games (if any) could have really just been a regular xbox game but wrapped in the 360 container?

This post has been edited by robot3: Jul 11 2011, 01:31 AM

[Hyper_Eye]

I think Perfect Dark Zero would be the obvious choice among the launch titles.

[Clockface]

I don't know if this is a serious post by the topic creator, but it could be - to someone with no real knowledge of consoles or computing then it might seem like a legitimite question to ask, especially if the topic creator knows that PCs can be upgraded to run newer games, but he knows nothing of the actual technicalities, or the conceptual differences between a console and a PC.

Anyway, Andytjuh, there is no way to do as you ask, as the 360 is not only entriely different in every practial way to the XBox 1 (different CPU, GPU, RAM speed, etc), but the 360 is much more powerful than the XBox 1, so all the clever programming in the world couldn't simulate a 360 on the XBox 1.


I suppose a skilled hardware person could take a 360, rip it's insides out, and put them in an XBox 1's case. I know that's nothing like what you are asking, but it's the only way you'll ever be able to run XBox 360 games on an XBox 1.

Actually sort of related, I was always wondering and this is all hypothetical of course, but in the early days of the 360 were any games made for it that technically could have run on a regular xbox? Like in the sense of if they programmed whatever game for the xbox instead of using 360 code (and without adding/ downgrading any graphics and such), that the regular xbox would have been able to run it? As with any system it can take a bit before the games are made to take advantage of said system, but in the early days of the 360, I really wonder how many games (if any) could have really just been a regular xbox game but wrapped in the 360 container?

Not strictly speaking, as the game's code would have to be written in whatever code the PowerPC CPU in the 360 uses, and not the x86 code that the XBox (and PCs, by the way) use. Also, the graphical hardware is very different, so the code for the XBox 1's GPU (graphical processing unit) would be very different from the code needed to achieve equivalent effects on the 360.

Theroretically, a game written for the XBox 1 could be modifed and recompiled for the 360, assuming the full source code is available (and well commented!), though I imagine the changes needed for the audio/visual hardware would be cumbersome, especially if the graphical output is drastically improved from XBox ability to the 360's potential ability. I don't know if this was done for any game, though it is concevable that quite a few games began life aimed at the XBox 1, and were instead moved to the 360 with whatever changes were necessary.

[Hyper_Eye]

Most Xbox and 360 games don't use any assembly. It's just C++ with the directx API mostly. If the DirectX API used for an Xbox 360 game didn't depend on anything beyond DX8 then the differences would be practically negligible unless the textures were simply too much for the Xbox to handle.

[Movax]

Anyway, Andytjuh, there is no way to do as you ask, as the 360 is not only entriely different in every practial way to the XBox 1 (different CPU, GPU, RAM speed, etc), but the 360 is much more powerful than the XBox 1, so all the clever programming in the world couldn't simulate a 360 on the XBox 1

I disagree completely - you could have an emulator for the 360, and it could run correctly if written well, but I would guess it would perform at somewhere under 1 frames per second or maybe even 1 frame taking 5 to 20 seconds in some cases..maybe minutes. Just a guess. You might need a 128Mb system for even this to be possible though. Of course no one would ever bother to code this.

This post has been edited by Movax: Jul 13 2011, 05:39 PM

[Clockface]

Most Xbox and 360 games don't use any assembly. It's just C++ with the directx API mostly. If the DirectX API used for an Xbox 360 game didn't depend on anything beyond DX8 then the differences would be practically negligible unless the textures were simply too much for the Xbox to handle.

Seriously? I thought that for speed benefits the speed intensive routines would all be in assembly, with maybe the non-intensive stuff like frontends and simpler sub-games coded in a high level language. I haven't done any real coding since the 8 bit days (when m/c was necessary for speed) so I freely admit I know nothing about modern game programming, but I'm surprised that games are coded entirely in C/C++. Granted the programming and (especially) debugging is *much* easier that way, and of course porting would be a doddle by comparison, but unless the speed difference is less significant between C/C++ and 360 m/c than I'd imagine then I'd have thought that assembler was common in all well written games.

I disagree completely - you could have an emulator for the 360, and it could run correctly if written well, but I would guess it would perform at somewhere under 1 frames per second or maybe even 1 frame taking 5 to 20 seconds in some cases..maybe minutes. Just a guess. You might need a 128Mb system for even this to be possible though. Of course no one would ever bother to code this.

Oh no, you're right, any system can emulate any other system provided you're prepared to accept the necessary compromises. But in the case of an XBox 1 emulating a 360, the speed would be appallingly bad, and not just down to the CPU factor (the relative lack of memory of the XBox 1 would result in huggggggge delays whilst the memory was paged to and from the XBox's hard drive, which would be used as virtual RAM). Having 128MB RAM in the XBox 1 would help matters (provided, of course, the emulator was coded to take advantage of the extra 64MB) but the remaining memory/hard drive block moving would still be painful to see. And of course writing the routines to convert the 360's graphical calls to the XBox 1's whilst remaining relatively close to the real 360's output would be a real challenge, and when executed in the emulator would result in even more slowdown.

[Hyper_Eye]

The major exception would be where threads were relied upon to be responded to by multiple processors simultaneously. The 360 can do that because of its multi-core processor but the Xbox can only attend to a thread at a time.

[Movax]

but unless the speed difference is less significant between C/C++ and 360 m/c than I'd imagine then I'd have thought that assembler was common in all well written games.

The complexity of games these days makes them nearly impossible to code in assembly.. ppl don't have time to write thousands of instructions. As well as the complexity of modern CPUs with different levels of security and the strange proprietary functions and system calls of the OS/BIOS. No sane person is going to code assembly around that. Modern C++ compliers are also said to be so efficient, that it is rare that an assembly coder can beat the performance. I feel that compared to older systems there is probably a trade off of more RAM being used (compilers can often trade conservative RAM use for speed) but RAM is cheap and abundant these days.

A lot of the games now days are created more by graphics designers/animators/artists and held together by a bit of programmer glue.

I have read that some coders will code assembly for some shaders, but the are relatively short routines and somewhat separate from the main program.

[Clockface]

The complexity of games these days makes them nearly impossible to code in assembly.. ppl don't have time to write thousands of instructions. As well as the complexity of modern CPUs with different levels of security and the strange proprietary functions and system calls of the OS/BIOS. No sane person is going to code assembly around that. Modern C++ compliers are also said to be so efficient, that it is rare that an assembly coder can beat the performance. I feel that compared to older systems there is probably a trade off of more RAM being used (compilers can often trade conservative RAM use for speed) but RAM is cheap and abundant these days.

I wouldn't say that it's impossible to code the code in assembly (not least of all since the C/C++ complier itself is probably written in assembly and even if it's not then assembly lies at the root of the C/C++ compiler's source code, but in a lot of cases it would perhaps be classed as impractical, as the time needed to write, debug and streamline the code would be far larger than the time needed to do the same in a higher language, especially since an experienced coder or software house would likely have lots of seperate pre-written routines that could be used, regardless of the host platform, which of course is not the case in assembly when writing for different CPUs.

It's true too that RAM (and sometimes quickly accessible storage, such as the XBox's hard drive) can also be used to speed up programs as pre-calculated data tables can be stored and then accessed as needed instead of having the host machine perform the calculations in real time which would take longer. This was a trick used in some 8 bit games with 3D vector graphics, although I don't know how viable or necessary it would be with todays machines (or the XBox 1).

It would be interesting to know how much faster assembly code is compared to compiled C/C++, although such figures would only be per example, as the figure would be different depending on many things, not least the time and skill of the person coding the assembly version.

A lot of the games now days are created more by graphics designers/animators/artists and held together by a bit of programmer glue.

That's a great quote!

But yes, I know what you mean. It used to be that the programmers had to really optimist the software and use every trick they could think of to get the best out of the hardware. Nowadays, hardware is so powerful that it can do most things that you can reasonably ask of it without the programmers having to make too many concessions.

And the IDEs programmers have now are fantastic, and of course storage isall hard drive and USB sticks. No messing about with a simple assembler with had a source limit of 19KB, no saving and loading to cassette, and using a virtual machine you get the unimaginable luxury of being able to step through code and see where if anywhere it goes awry. It's amazing how computing has changed so much in thirty years, when you consider that almost everything else (aside from mobile phones, TV, and playing music) hasn't changed much at all.

[Movax]

Of course you can always code in assembly, but unless you need to access certain CPU flags or perform some weird trick, a well thought out algorithm should compile to be just as fast in C vs assembly almost every time.

If your source code sucks, the compiler can't make it better.

You don't necessarily have to have had assembly to start with somewhere.. someone could have developed a complier on another system first and cross complied to the target system.

The speed thing vs RAM is more than lookup tables, you can unroll loops and insert functions rather than calling to them and avoid a lot of small delays..stuff like that can give speed boosts always, back since the start of computing at the cost of RAM use.

Of and of course there is the topic of portability..

This post has been edited by Movax: Jul 17 2011, 02:00 AM

[Xboxer64]

This was an interesting read through. I'm amazed at where it ended up, considering the original question.

[hehateme2bro]

While I am a noob here, I would think that there are certain games where it would be possible to at least do some kind of crossover. The game that pops into my head is NFL Head Coach 09. I would think that if you removed the actual playing of the games, which why would you play the games when you can just play Madden if you want to play an actual game of football, that this would be possible. It is very easy to just simulate the actual games every week. Being that it is a simulation game, the graphics are VERY basic for everything but the actual football portion. Scouting, Drafting, signing Free Agents, managing the team, all of that stuff if just clickable options on text. I would think that a game like that would be pretty easy (in comparision to most 360 games) to port removing the aspects of the game that wouldn't play. Now I am not saying that it would work, I mean as others have said they are really 2 different consoles in every matter, but if it could be done at all, I think that it would at least be most likely on a game like Head Coach.

This post has been edited by hehateme2bro: Jul 31 2011, 10:09 PM

[edwardrich01]

was an interesting read through...