Microsoft enlists nVidia's help with Xbox 360 backward compatibility

So Microsoft has sort of been evading giving a straight answer on the question of
backward compatibility with original Xbox games — they've made some quasi-commitment to ensuring that the "best-selling" games would be playable on the new console, but haven't given any details about how it all might work. It looks like the solution they may be opting for licensing technology from nVidia that would allow the Xbox 360's ATI
graphics chip to emulate the NVidia chip from the original Xbox — at least, to some extent. Again, the details are still a bit unclear, and it appears that many of the older games will still require some sort of recompilation or modification to run on the new box. Patches or "emulation profiles" for some old games will supposedly ship on the Xbox 360's hard drive, with further patches to be distributed over time via Xbox Live.

[Thanks, Bill Shannon]