Sadly, most of the XBOX's library doesn't get my interest, so the compatibility list covers what I'd ever beg for. (The not-so turd ports of any Sonic 6th gen game, Fable, both Halo games, OddWorld, Jade Empire, etc.) I'm not into RTS or BTS games, and I'm very picky about racing games, for as much as I love them. It's still leagues better than what Sony did with PS2 emulation, forcing you to pay for a limited selection of games all over again on the PSN. Although, yes, for XBOX emulation, it doesn't mean anything for preservation of the entire console's library; I agree on that.
It was probably cheaper to buy the fully backward compatible launch PS3 than it was to buy every single one of the digital titles if you think about it. So you save $100 getting the newer model? Well buy 10 PS2 download titles at $10 each and you're back where you started with less stuff. 60GB FTW.
Unless you lived in Europe in which case the launch PS3 didn't have backwards compatibility. Also fucking hell is the BC-PS3 heavy. It oughtweighs the original Xbox.
Keep in mind that they cut backwards compatibility before moving to the PS3 slim. The non-BC fat PS3's are the same size and probably the same weight as the BC ones were. On a note more related to this thread, I had always assumed the reason they got 360 BC working so well is that they did something similar to CXBX where they emulate specific XDK versions. So they'd "port" the specific XDK version to 360 natively, and they'd still have to emulate an x86 CPU but any SDK calls could be handed natively without the emulation overhead. This would explain why when a group of new games got supported, they usually were based on the same XDK versions. Not sure if there's any truth to that, since none of the documented information I've seen goes into specific technical details, (the link earlier in this thread sure doesn't) but it would help explain why they never reached 100% compatibility. Re-testing every supported game is probably a factor too, but I'm not sure how much of a sticking point that would be since the emulation wasn't perfect in the first place. (There are some side-by-side comparisons on YouTube)
Completely broken, at least for Munch's Odyssey. Hope you enjoy playing with an irregular framerate and no sounds.
This list would say otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360
That list doesn't even show all the Xbox games that aren't emulated period. Where's X-Men Legends II then? EDIT: It says about 51% of the library is emulated. But that's when you combine all regions together. Some regions are incompatible with some games while others are not. Example, the only version of X-Men Legends (1) that will work is the Japanese version.
