Windows 8 to play Xbox 360 games

I wish they would hold special weekends that would open the system up to cross-platform, god this would be so much fun!

the only reason i could see them doing this is if the xbox 720 is not backwards compatible.
otherwise it just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint

Sure it does; more sales of games for their last-gen console (when the 360 becomes 'last gen').

it would reduce hardware sales of consoles though, reducing their market share. no way they would want that

What about piracy and DRM? Its going to be trample sales for games and consoles as it will be more common place

The Xbox 360 suffers from huge amounts of piracy already anyway. And it hasn't be revealed how you could play these games on Windows 8 - it may only be a select catalog, and only digitally distributed.

Microsoft also make a rather small profit margin from the hardware itself, as do most console manufacturers - if they make a profit on it at all. The big money is in subscriptions, DLC, "arcade" titles, apps, accessories and software etc. All of which the PC can utilise via GFWL.

I don't see any convincing argument why it couldn't be a possibility.

Biggest problem I can see is the processor architecture.

The 360 is powerpc based, and one of the strengths of a console is that you can program "to the metal" and you know what hardware you will have.

If you are able to just take a disc and put it into the drive and play the game, you will either need to have a BEAAASTLY machine in order to emulate a completely different instruction set, or you will have to download a copy that has been recompiled for x86/x64, in which case, why wouldn't you just make a PC port.

I've seen this rumour round a few places, it would be really interesting if it does fly

in before 13 year old kids complaining about the performance of the game on their crappy vendor pc

Originally Posted by rec

The Xbox 360 suffers from huge amounts of piracy already anyway. And it hasn't be revealed how you could play these games on Windows 8 - it may only be a select catalog, and only digitally distributed.

Microsoft also make a rather small profit margin from the hardware itself, as do most console manufacturers - if they make a profit on it at all. The big money is in subscriptions, DLC, "arcade" titles, apps, accessories and software etc. All of which the PC can utilise via GFWL.

I don't see any convincing argument why it couldn't be a possibility.

actually for console makers the big money is in the rights they get from game publishers who makes games for their platform, they take a huge chuck of money from every game sold for an xbox/ps3 etc, its one of the reasons console versions of games are always more expensive. they dont get that on pcs.

market share is what they care about, and that's why most hardware sells at a loss.