Major Nelson has
answered the big question about Xbox Originals with the following statement from his blog:
"Specifically, folks want to know if these games will have additional functionality like Achievements and Gamer score. The answer is no. These are the original games that were created before Xbox 360. In order to preserve the integrity of the original gaming experience they provide, they will have the features available at the time of their initial release."
I can't say that I'm too surprised by this. I had held out hope that Microsoft would add a little more value to these titles in someway but it looks like they are just shoveling them up on to the service for people to download. I do wonder if this means that multiplayer games like
Halo and
Crimson Skies will work over Live or not but I'm not holding my breath. I guess it is a bit much to ask for Microsoft to build in some new value to the games but hey it's a way for people to get a chance to play some cool games and allow Microsoft to mooch a few extra bucks off some old games and help sell some hard drives.
I do wonder why they can add leaderboard and achievement support to a game like
Pacman and
Cyberball 2072 and not to a more modern game though. Feh
