Xbox One emulating Xbox 360 emulating the original Xbox

So now that we know that the Xbox One is emulating the Xbox 360 architecture rather than each individual game do you think there is any possibility they would let you play all those original Xbox games that work on 360? I would love to pop in my 11 year old copy of Burnout 3 into my Xbox One and start playing.

If they do it I'd imagine they'd write a new virtual machine from scratch. The original Xbox BC on 360 was garbage for the most part.

Plus, if I recall correctly, backwards compatibility of titles will be publisher-mandated, and I'm not sure if many publishers would be interested in supporting OG Xbox games.

Oh dude. Panzer Dragoon Orta? On the Xbone?

[X] Would

Finally Halo 1 (still the best vehicle based FPS) will work on Xbox One. ;)

I wish I could buy KOTOR digitally that would support widescreen (I'm not sure my Android tablet can run it).

@thesquarepear: Doesn't KOTOR on PC support widescreen?

Not by default, you have to find a way to make the game run in a widescreen resolution.

Um, having a console emulate another console emulating another console sounds like a terribly inefficient way to emulate anything, although I'd like to see someone try it.

Jeez that would be nuts that's not a step I'm interesting in personally. I want to see how well they can fill out the 360 library on there first. Is there even a way to digitally get those games? At least the 360 marketplace is still fully up and running.

@thesquarepear: When they announced it I was like yeah! I could play halo 1 again! Then I remembered they released the updated version on 360. Man Halo 1, I don't play many shooters now but I got that nostalgia and the music is so good.

As a total computer architecture layman, aren't the Xbox and Xbox One closer related in terms of hardware than the 360? I wonder if it's be relatively easier to make an emulator, or whatever, for the original system?

While I've got a neat stack of 360 games I've yet to play, my original Xbox collection numbers in the 100s and I'd be very happy for a chance to revisit them.

Haha, not that Microsoft would even consider it. It's a damn shame there's no emulator even for the Xbox on PC. Sad to think that as more and more hardware fails, that entire generation of games will be lost.

@flameboy84: They could make those games available digitally. Of course this could be a rights nightmare and publisher's would have to approve it. JSRF is the big one for me. It's not available to buy anywhere but even if they did get a digital store up for the original Xbox there's no way SEGA would care enough to re-license the music. Shame.

@subwayd:

You'd like to think PC emulation will be possible some day however janky at some point they will surely be able to just brute force it. Granted that could be some way off.

emulate-ception

I don't know. If I recall correctly that original Xbox emulation was not operating within the 360 OS. But I'm basing that on the fact that all of the 360 system functionality was lost when you played those games. It's an interesting question. I would be willing to guess that emulating those would probably have some pretty lackluster results though. They weren't the best versions of those games to begin with, adding another layer of emulation on top of that isn't exactly going to gussy them up.

How much does an OG Xbox run these days anyway? $30? $40? Certainly it'd be worth the expanded library and consistent performance just to go that route, if you're that interested.