In my opinion, they ALL should be. I want to be able to unhook my current Xbox, and throw it in the closet, instead of keeping it around to play a few select games.
The question of whether or not the Xbox 360 will run older games has never been fully answered. Even after the Xbox 360 event on MTV, Microsoft publicly admitted that they hadn’t even made up their minds on the question of backwards compatibility. Later, Microsoft Senior VP of the Home and Entertainment Division Robbie Bach left us with a vague promise to provide support for the “top selling” games.
I still don’t understand why they couldn’t just make it work with all current gen Xbox games. The PS2 didn’t seem to have any problems. Maybe MS should put more effort into this.. Check out the posting at Ars Technica.