Last week's industry trade magazine MCV quoted HMV's UK games head saying that sales of the original Xbox were slow and that Microsoft had essentially hung the console out to dry. And he's not wrong - there will be no PSOne style reinvention for the Xbox. While they won't say it publicly, Microsoft's lack of first-party releases for the big black console essentially confirms the demise. But while this is a problem for retailers, struggling through this transitional period, is it a problem for punters?
The hardcore will have moved on to the 360 while the younger audience that normally picks up older consoles has a large back catalogue to choose from. Of course, that doesn't mean that backwards compatibility isn't important. Especially during the slow launch period it was crucial to have access to older games, most of which were 27 times more enjoyable than Perfect Dark Zero. But now that the 360 is in full swing, with a pile of decent games, do we still need to play our original Xbox titles? "Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility," said Peter Moore in May. Oh dear. It was only a matter of time before the backtrack arrived. "I want to be clear that my comments were not about 'nobody cares,'" Moore said recently. "Of course we care, and we're going to continue to get as close as we can to our stated target of every Xbox game being backward compatible to the Xbox 360."
For most 360 owners it has became more of a political than a practical issue. They'll never play Grabbed by the Ghoulies on their 360, but it's the principal that matters. Or does it? Do you care about Xbox backwards compatibility?
