@titang1: Why is it humorous? One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Why would they stop releasing bc titles because they cancelled one overbudget new game (or whatever the reason was)? Yes, I was looking forward to Scalebound but I suspect they had a decent reason... they don't just axe a great game for no reason.
@otterbee: For MOST people, they have a certain number of games. A subset of those games are the ones they want to play badly enough to keep their 360 ("essential"). This subset is usually much smaller. Once MS gets enough of the games in that subset working, most people would then decide they could unhook and possibly sell their 360. For me this has already happened... the ones that have not made it yet are not ones I consider essential enough that I need to keep a 360 hooked up. Hopefully they will continue to knock off some of the others, but I'm satisfied with where we are and greatly appreciate the option of playing my old games (and frequently do).
It seems like there are a LOT of people on the internet who claim this feature is useless unless it's perfect (iow all games are available). I don't think this is the case... it all depends on how you look at it. If Civ Rev is on that list for you then it may very well not be good enough for you yet... but every time they release another batch of games that are knocking off people's "essential" list and allowing more people to retire their 360. They seem pretty committed to continuing, so hopefully they will get to you soon!
In addition, I love that as they are made bc, there are a lot of old games that I actually pick up for the first time... it's nice to get to go back and play games I missed.
@orochipunisher: I have to say, Microsoft released a big update for backwards compatibility a short time ago (few weeks?). They also made special updates to all the 360 Gears games. It IS pretty much flawless now. Playing Black Ops and World at War campaigns seems flawless as well. (I had some definite issues with BO and the gears titles before the update)
I don't think you've thought about this very much...
(1) Appearance. If you care what your living space looks like, or have a spouse that does, having one console instead of 2 or 3 is a huge difference. No extra console, no huge extra power brick, no extra controllers with chargers, etc. Most people don't want their living room to look cluttered. I also need a place to store the old console.
(2) Convenience and simplicity. It's impossible to make the argument that it's not way more convenient to just fire up the old game on the console you use all the time rather than dragging out another console or even switching inputs. And what if your 360 controllers are not charged? If I only play 360 games once in a while, it's likely that the batteries will not be charged. You can multiply the difficulty if appearance is a concern... am I expected to drag out the old console for each play session, since it will look like crap sitting out on the living room floor if it's left out? That's actually quite a bit of work.
(3) Reliability. Old consoles are... old. Optical drives give out, connectors can break, fans stop, etc. These things don't last forever, and especially if you are constantly dragging them out and plugging them in they will break and then you're done.
(4) Sales. There are people who didn't used to have a 360 but would love to play some of the games. Maybe they had PS3 last gen and now have a One. They may very well want to purchase some of the 360 games and catch up... a lot of them are pretty great, and there are even a lot of exclusives. This is an opportunity to sell old games to new people who didn't have access to them before. Frankly, I would love if they would add original Xbox support so I could play Republic Commando and Big Red one on the One.
(5) Future. Going forward, the hope is that as we move to new consoles the old games will "just work" on the new consoles. Backwards compatibility is a way to retroactively apply this concept to the 360 as well.
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