No Backward Compatibility For Xbox 2?

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Microsoft’s senior Xbox executives have confirmed that the upcoming Xbox 2 platform will not be able to play regular Xbox games. Bad news, indeed. Here’s a snip:

Sources close to Microsoft’s senior Xbox executives have confirmed that the company does not intend to make its next-generation console, which is set to be launched by late 2005, backwards compatible with existing Xbox software.

Speculation about the backwards compatibility functionality has been rife since it emerged that Xbox 2 – codenamed Xenon – will have radically different hardware to the original system, with a non-x86 processor, no hard drive and an ATI, rather than NVIDIA, graphics chipset, all of which would make running Xbox titles on the platform very difficult.