Can I play old US Xbox games on a Japanese 360?

June 15, 2008 6:47 AM

Can I play old US Xbox games on my Japanese 360 using the backwards compatibility function?

Google-fu has failed me, hive mind, please help.

I'm living in Japan and got a great deal on a used 360 (bunch of people bought one for Blue Dragon and then sold it to the second hand shops...I only paid about US$100 for a 40 gig system). I'm not having any problem finding region free games in English, or Japanese games with English support.

HOWEVER...I am planning on moving back to the states relatively soon, and will be taking the system with me. Back home, I have a huge pile of old first gen Xbox games. Will I be able to use them on my Japanese system? Does region coding even come into play with the 360 emulator? If so, were most Xbox games region free or region coded? If they were region coded, any idea if there was significant english support for Japanese released Xbox games (I can buy plenty of old Xbox games here, but I don't want to bother if they're all in nihongo!)?

Thanks!

posted by MostHolyPorcine to Technology (1 answer total)

The NTSC games won't work on an NTSC-J system, unfortunately (here's an MS KB article which covers it).

Region coding is no fun.
posted by The Shiny Thing at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2008