As tired as you are about hearing about it, you know it’s important. That’s why we are bringing you even more on the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility saga.  Microsoft has already said that the 360 would be partially compatible with some original Xbox titles.  One of the recent rumors is that in order for that to work, your 360 must have a hard drive. 1Up got a chance to speak with an industry representative who offered their opinion:

One of the rumors floating around is that backwards compatibility will only work with a hard drive, which would have left Core systems out in the cold. As it turns out, that’s only partially true. In many cases, the hard drive will indeed be necessary because you’ll need an Xbox emulator file to sit on the hard drive (it’s still unconfirmed whether this emulator comes pre-shipped on 360 hard drives but it is highly likely the case) and make your Xbox games 360-friendly. However, our understanding is that this isn’t perfectly foolproof, and that it may not work in every single case.

What’s especially interesting, though, is that select premium Xbox titles in the present and future are getting special treatment. We’ve learned that Microsoft is inviting some developers to make their current Xbox titles backwards compatible for both 360 SKUs—that the games themselves will contain the Xbox 360 emulation code on them. In fact, certain Xbox titles already contain the code to boot up under emulation on the Xbox 360. Teams from Microsoft are helping developers with the project.

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