Kotaku's Brian Crecente brought up a good point, and thus we ask: how in the Forerunner's name could this have slipped under the radar? He asked Microsoft game development manager Chris Satchell about backwards compatibility, and the reply was that Microsoft's team was still on it, but:

"At some point we're going to focus less on it... When you get to the end of this year there will be a reduced focus on backwards compatibility. There are so many 360 games out there. I don't know if it's important anymore."

Did back-compat drop in Microsoft's priority To-Do list? The justification that there are so many 360 games out there has to sit with another statement Chris made earlier: 50% of 360 owners don't own the original Xbox. From that perspective, it's like saying that as the market composition changes, the original Xbox segment becomes a smaller minority, and sooner or later, it'll probably be more effective to redirect resources on back-compats to other endeavors.

But then that brings up one question legacy Xbox gamers will ask: so, when or how many of our favorite games will be back-compatted before the axe falls (specific games dependent on each gamer's preferences)?

Oh well. Chris also said that XNA Studio Express is getting wide usage - we won't be surprised if, after Microsoft dims the lights on official backwards compatibility, and people still clamor for it, someone starts working on a homebrew Xbox emulator for the rest of the library. Unless that takes an exploit for it to work, or something, which starts raising some very uncomfortable questions... Just wondering.

And if you want to start the countdown now, well, start with January's back-compat update.

A couple of days ago, we were able to update you on some game titles that have been patched up to be backwards compatible for the Xbox Live. Now, if you thought your 360 couldn't get any more, well, "alive" with Xbox Live, Major Nelson has posted Microsoft's August '06 list of game titles which have been made compatible with your 360. The list includes nearly 50 games, some of which were already compatible before, but are now updated.

This new patch brings the entire list of backwards compatible games to around 300 titles. Imagine, 300! Doesn't it make you feel like treating all those 300 games as Pokemon Gotta catch 'em all, kids! So here's the August '06 list. Make sure you click the Full Article link below to see the rest of the games.

• Aggressive Inline
• Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis
• All Star Baseball 2003
• All Star Baseball 2005
• Burnout 3: Takedown
• Catwoman
• Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart UPDATED
• Counter Strike
• Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
• Dead to Rights
• Digimon Rumble Arena 2 UPDATED
• ESPN Major League Baseball
• Fatal Frame 2
• Ford vs. Chevy UPDATED

We all have our own crosses to carry, and just because Microsoft is ranked 48th in the Fortune 500 list, it doesn't exempt them from carrying the crosses that they should bear. One of those crosses is the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility issue which has been dogging the company ever since.

Without a doubt, the MS guys working on it including Albert Penello, are doing their best to bring great Xbox games to the 360. From our earlier report about Mr. Penello's insights on backwards compatibility, it seems that the guys who bear the unenviable task of making Xbox games compatible with the 360 are having a hellish time - but as they say one man's hell, could be another man's heaven.

Such is the case of one Michael L. Brundage, one of those nameless devs who have been slaving to make Xbox games compatible with the obviously more powerful gaming beast -- the Xbox 360. He finds the Xbox backwards compatibility to be a unique project, in the sense that normally, once you understand how something magical works, it's much less amazing. With Xbox backwards compatibility, the opposite is true -- the more you understand what it needs to do, the more certain you are that it's impossible, and consequently the more amazed you are to see it in action. Obviously, he feels fortunate to get to work on it.

He believes that it will be the hardest technical challenge of his career. He enthusiastically divulges that it's "not just the difficulty of emulating completely different processors and devices. It's also all the arcane knowledge I've needed to acquire about kernel-level development, advanced graphics processing, operating systems and computer architectures. It's changed the way I think about software."

And in his own words, he says that "a few people who understand how emulators work look at these numbers, impressive as they are, and conclude that Xbox backwards compatibility will not work." Included in that 'few people who understand' is himself. But doing something deemed as impossible is so much fun, according to Brundage. What makes it fun? The challenge of making the impossible possible. That's nice and all, let's just hope that Mr. Brundage's positive attitude results to more backwards compatible games.

The backwards compatibility update that we announced yesterday has gone live today according to Major Nelson. The June 2006 update includes 21 games and 6 additional Japanese only titles. A few of the now compatible Xbox 1 titles are Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Star Wars: Battlefront. Hopefully Microsoft will keep working on Backwards Compatibility until they at least get  my personal favorite Psychonauts to work. The full list is as follows:

4x4 EVO 2, Amped 2, Bad Boys 2, Big Mutha Truckers, DOOM 3, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Fatal Frame, FlatOut, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Intellivision Lives, LEGO Star Wars, Minority Report, MLB SlugFest 20-04, The Punisher, RalliSport Challenge, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Spawn Armageddon, Spider-Man, Star Wars Battlefront, State of Emergency and Zapper.

The Japanese Only Titles are:
 Bistro Cupid 1, Flight Academy , Othello Seminar, Igo Seminar, Shogi Seminar, Mahjong Seminar.

Just when you call him a darling he turns around and kicks you in the shins. About two weeks ago Xbox uber-spokesman Peter Moore said something that nearly caused Xbox gamers to short circuit, "Nobody is concerned with about backwards compatibility anymore." Moore said. "We underpromised and overdelivered on that." Huh!? Just about anyone who's been following 360 backwards compatibility felt cheated and betrayed, as it sounded like Moore was laying the groundwork for Microsoft to slow down its push to add more titles to the 360's BC list.

Just yesterday we got news of twenty more titles being added to the backwards compatibility list, and we also got clarification from Peter Moore about those incendiary comments, thanks to an interview on Major Nelson's podcast. Apparently Moore says people mistook the word "concerned" for "cared" and stated that Microsoft still cared about backward compatibility, and was continuing to work on getting more  Xbox titles running on the 360. I expect if you're thrust in the spotlight as often as Moore is you're bound to slip up now and again, don't worry Peter, we still love you!

One of the side effects of the 360's Spring Update is that all of the backwards compatible Xbox 1 games now have the ability to play custom soundtracks off of the Xbox 360. The custom soundtracks though are not fully selectable like on the 360.

"Music volume level persists between game / reboots" fix in the Spring Dashboard update, I found out purely by accident that you can now listen to music while playing XBOX 1 games on the XBOX 360. Just start up any ol' playlist or a ripped CD and fire up Halo 2 or any other XBOX 1 game that suits your fancy. While the controls won't be there when you hit the guide button, you can still control the action with your 360 remote (if you have one)."

I went ahead and tried the custom soundtrack method above out with Halo 2 on my 360 by picking a soundtrack off of my hard drive before putting the game in and it DOES work. I played two different ranked games and a custom game over Xbox Live and the soundtrack never turned off. This is great news for people that wanted to their own music on some of the Xbox 1 games that play on the 360.