Jane at 1UP asks the questions keeping us all up at night:
One of the rumors floating around is that backwards compatibility will only work with a hard drive, which would have left Core systems out in the cold. As it turns out, that’s only partially true. In many cases, the hard drive will indeed be necessary because you’ll need an Xbox emulator file to sit on the hard drive (it’s still unconfirmed whether this emulator comes pre-shipped on 360 hard drives but it is highly likely the case) and make your Xbox games 360-friendly. However, our understanding is that this isn’t perfectly foolproof, and that it may not work in every single case.
She goes on to report that some games being released already have 360 emulation code on them but this requires help from Microsoft and thus only the big names get this treatment. No names but you can probably make educated guesses. I don’t think the lack of PlayStation-level backwards compatibility will be a major drawback for most people but it is for me, owning only the red-headed stepchild of the current generation. If I can put together enough disposable scratch for the PS3 or 360 I’ll be rocking all night long to games you forgot about years ago. Years!
[via]
