Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility

With the Xbox 360 getting more and more popular, more and more new exciting games will be coming out of the market. Gamers will be able to play more exciting as well as more visually remarkable games on their game console.

But some gamers may still miss playing some of their favorite games in the past that run on older Xbox models. In order to allow gamers to play their past favorites on their new Xbox 360, developers of the game console has made backward compatibility as part of the newer model's various exciting features.

Xbox 360 Backward compatibility is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox game console. Emulated games make it possible for older Xbox games to be played in your new Xbox 360 game console. Doing so would allow the gamer with a few benefits on the side.

For one, the Xbox 360 is able to offer graphical enhancements because the old games are rendered in 720p, 1080i, or 1080p video resolution with anti-aliasing enabled rather than the older Xbox standard of 480p. Graphics become clearer and crispers and may even enhance the way the game is being played with a more powerful processor in store.

Some older Xbox games may also benefit from a great improvement in the rendered draw distance that is due to the newer system's greater memory bandwidth. But not all older games may be able to display these enhancements. There are some older game versions that do not perform that well in an emulated environment. Such games often exhibit a lower frame rate on the Xbox 360 than on the originals Xbox.

Before one can play emulated games on the Xbox 360, a hard drive and an emulation profile may be needed in order to play original Xbox games. There are updated emulation profiles that can be obtained through Xbox Live. Emulation profiles can also be obtained by burning the profiles downloaded from Xbox.com into a CD. One can also do it by ordering an update emulation profile disc from Microsoft.