Emulation would not be an option for XBOX 1 games on XBOX 2.

The rumour is flawed:

1. As per the rumour VPC would emulate whatever graphics card the host uses. So if Nvidia on the host it would emulate Nvidia on the guest, ATI on host. ATI on guest. This doesn't make any sense for emulation.....now maybe some sort of pass-thru to the host graphics card would make more since.

2. XBOX 1 games that require a hard drive. What of them? Also memory cards could work to emulate a virtual HD on a memory card I guess...but really...is that likely?

3. I can pretty much guarantee that Microsoft cannot emulate an Nvidia graohics card in VPC. Nvidia would not allow it. As we all now the graphics chipset in XBOX 2 will be ATI. ATI cards are not NVIDIA cards and NVIDIA cards are not ATI cards.....so there HAS to be some sort of emulation for full game compatibility.

4. Selling a Console with half-assed barely working features is not going to work. Microsoft may be able to do so in the PC world but in the Console world if they even try it Sony will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Actually I bet Xbox games are all basically DirectX. The XBOX2 is using a IBM PowerPC chip but a GPU that is likely very similar to a DirectX-supporting PC GPU. So, they could perhaps just need to emulate the CPU, and a triple core PowerPC at 3.5Ghz (assuming the leaks and rumors are correst) shouldn't have much trouble with a Celeron 733.....

Ah, but it doesn't work like that. You cannot simply say that a PowerPC chip of as you say 3.5ghz can emulate fully the speed of a Celeron 733Mhz. Also the inclusion of an extra x86 processor in a PowerPC chipset, although possible is not very likely. Imagine the thermal/noise/size issues. (Although without an HD it would be possible).

Now I'm not an expert but I find it extremely unlikely that even a single dedicated 3.5ghz 64bit processor could fully emulate at full speed a Geforce 3.5 video card with full features....not to mention the amount of bandwidth and video memory required for such a feat.. It would probably make more sense to include the graphics chipset from the XBOX 1 for backwards compatibility......

Microsoft should have thought ahead when they were designing the XBOX. Sony wisely built upon their technologies whereas Microsoft (according to the leaked specs) seems to be trying to push for more power, leaving backwards compatibility behind.

Oh well, That's what XBOX emulators are for! 😀

I agree with DosFreak that it seems suspicious. I would rather hear news about improved sound support. Poor sound emulation (practically every game I tried had cracking sound) makes VPC almost useless for old games.

I have played most of my dos games(star trek a final unity, Grand Prix 2 steel panthers.. etc) under VPC 5.2 and they all worked fast and surprisingly well. The sound was perfect (sb16) on a P4 2.4Ghz.

I tried the newer VPC 2004 (and sp1) and it is now useless, the games run 3-4 times SLOWER and the sound is cracking.
Use version 5.2, it is much better for dos games.

Speculation is all well and good but like the man said if backwards compatibility isnt upto what users received with their ps1/ps2 transition M$ will have problems if they make compatibility a selling point.

A 3.5Ghz PowerPC 5-class even with 3 cores would only have about 22.5 gigaflops of theoretical computing power. That could emulate a 733mhz Celeron easily. As for the GPU.. Consider that GPU's nowadays have far more gflops than your main processors. According to the whitepapers a friend of mine saw on ATI's R520 (The PC release of the R500 which will be used in the Xbox2), it will have roughly 65 gigaflops of power. Given that most of the commands of the nvidia chip could be done with a simple directx wrapper, the only emulation required would be for nVidia specific functions and pixel shaders.. Which even an R360 (ATI 9800/pro/xt) could do without breaking a sweat. But Nvidia will NEVER license those shaders to Microsoft after all that has happened. Without drawing some serious blood at least. Emulating those pixel shaders == being sued by Nvidia.

The specs for the Xenon == Xbox emulation being pwned.
The relationship between microsoft, ati, and nvidia == no backwards compatibility.