360 dragging heels over backwards compatibility

So, you queued through the night on Oxford Street to buy an Xbox 360, fighting for pavement space with the guy holding the Golf Sale sign and braving the joys of the British winter.

Your reward? An absurdly quiet update at the end of last week adding backwards compatibility support for a measly three original Xbox games.

The patch, which is available via Xbox Live or a PC if your 360’s offline, means you can now play the rather good BLACK, so-so Star Wars Battlefront II and World Soccer Winning Eleven 9.

It also fixes support for a dozen games – including Half Life 2 and Stuff fave Forza – that Microsoft cocked up first time round.

The tiny number of added games, however, is a mite galling, even for a bunch of pampered journos like us. And we had our 360 delivered on a silver platter, complete with organic chocolate truffles and a free gamepad.

When the 360 was first launched back in December, Microsoft suggested support would be gradually added to all the old Xbox’s games, ultimately covering its entire catalogue [story here].

But even when Microsoft does get round to this, emulation of the golden oldies will only work if you’ve bought the £300 version of the 360 or purchased a hard drive to go with the Core one.

By comparison, the PS3 will play all PSOne and PS2 titles from the off, while Nintendo’s Revolution will play GameCube discs and NES, SNES and N64 classics via an online download shop.

The full list of the 100+ Xbox titles that’ll work on the 360 is on Microsoft’s site, here.