Halo and Halo 2 to get visual improvements on the 360!

(This 480p image is how H2 looks now on an HDTV and the 720p is how it will look on the 360 on a HDTV)

A while back, Microsoft announced that the 360 would have some level of backward compatibility. A handy feature for folks with big Xbox collections moving into the future. We worked closely with that team to ensure that Halo and Halo 2 both performed according to plan. That meant a lot of work for our test team.

To clarify, the "new" version of Halo or Halo 2 is simply the disk you have already. Pop it into your 360 and it'll load up just like before. You will have to log into Xbox Live to enable Halo 2's online functions, but both games will work immediately.

But here's another bonus – the hardware in the 360 can do a lot of nifty stuff, and specifically in the cases of Halo and Halo 2, it can display the graphics in wide screen, at 720p, with full scene anti-aliasing. And it doesn't look kludgy, artifacty or smeary like an upscanning DVD player. The best way to describe it is that both games look like they're running on a PC at those resolutions.

We'll have some more information about these resolutions on Friday.

Now, to reiterate, we didn't redo any of the old textures or geometry – this is simply the game you already own, running at a higher resolution. The results are not miraculous, but for owners of HDTVs (or VGA monitors with the appropriate cable) they are sweet.

(Via: Bungie.net)

This is how Halo 2 used to look....

This is how it will look on the 360.

This of course is how good Halo will look on the 360! Almost as good as the PC.