Xbox 360 to be backwards compatible?
So far one of the biggest unanswered questions about the Xbox 360 is whether or not it's going to be backwards compatible with games for the original Xbox. Other the past year or so we've gotten plenty of conflicting reports about backwards compatibility—it's no secret that there are some emulation "issues" involved—but the Inq seems to think that Microsoft might have figured this one out. Their evidence? It's not exactly much to go on, so don't come crying to us when the Xbox 360 comes out and you can't play your copy of Halo 2 on it, but they're pointing to an online questionaire about Xbox Live which mentions that:
Xbox Live is an online gaming service that works across both the current Xbox system and the future Xbox 2. You will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles. If you are playing an Xbox game on Live you will be able to compete against people playing that same game on Xbox 2.
The catch is that this doesn't necessarily imply backwards compatiblity. It's possible that this could mean that they're simply going to rerelease Xbox 360 versions of current Xbox titles, sort of like how everyone bought Led Zeppelin IV all over again when it came out on CD. But to be honest, we won't know for sure until the reveal all the gory details for the new console next month.
