You'll forgive me if I took the latest XBox 360 press release from Microsoft with a grain of salt. But it turns out that the joke was on me as this weekend saw plenty of new XBox 360 game systems in all of the major outlets.

The XBox 360 is backward compatible with the original XBox, meaning that it will still play games made for XBox. To make this work, however, the good folks at Microsoft have come up with a system where they will individually certify each game as backward compatible before they will actually allow the game to be played on the new system. Out of 752 games currently available on the XBox, they have certified a little over 200 titles. A quick glance at the list reveals a rather eclectic collection of titles, indicating that it's not a game's popularity that puts it on the fast track to certification, but some other factors (ease of conversion, perhaps?) involved. Otherwise, I'd have to assume that BMX XXX and Volvo: Drive for Life were much more successful than I'd previously suspected...