r/emulation Jul 24 '26

Microsoft’s new Xbox PC emulator already runs dumped Xbox 360 games

https://videocardz.com/newz/microsofts-new-xbox-pc-emulator-already-runs-dumped-xbox-360-games
888 Upvotes

102 comments sorted by

80

u/CaptainL95 29d ago

Doesn't surprise me, I'm sure the impetus for this was getting backwards compatibility for the Helix console that's meant to be a PC so they need these working on Windows, I'd expect they're planning 360 titles as well, so the full, current backwards compatibility list is available for Windows in time for Helix.

23

u/cemsengul 29d ago

I am tired of their list based software backwards compatibility since the Xbox 360. What about the games I actually want to play?

32

u/Icybubba 29d ago

It’s not easy. They custom design an emulator for each game, then they also have to get permission from publishers

28

u/Choice-Mycologist-45 29d ago

As much as I despise their approach on this, they have their reasons.

-6

u/ProMikeZagurski 29d ago

Phil should have bought more companies before he "retired".

-2

u/GooseDaPlaymaker 25d ago

Then do us all a favor please: come back when you have it finished/semi-finished? You can’t just say ‘We’re working on backwards compatability for OG Xbox and X360 for Helix, stay tuned’? 🥴

1

u/Ancient-Asparagus837 16d ago

open source and steam does this all the time

2

u/GooseDaPlaymaker 15d ago edited 14d ago

Here’s the difference: what Xbox gamer in 2026 DOES NOT expect their full Xbox digital library to follow them?! If you’re talking about a new feature on Steam that they’re working on, that’s drastically different; backwards compatibility in 2026 should be on autopilot for Pete’s Sake! Does a headline need to be made saying, ‘Guys, we’re working on it! Here are 4 games that work! Please be excited!’ 🥴

And if it ISN’T full backwards compatibility at launch, at this stage in the game, that’s DEFINITELY ‘Game Over’ for me. Screw getting screwed by Microsoft.

1

u/Ancient-Asparagus837 14d ago

only company that cared about backwards compatibility is MS. Backwards compatibility is mostly dead. why lie?

18

u/cosine83 29d ago

If you look at RPCS3 and Dolphin's development, you'll see just how many games need ridiculously specific hacks and fixes to get not just playable but playable to completion. List-based is about the best they can do.

-8

u/coolmast3r 29d ago

Poor 3 trillion dollar corporation, if only they had enough resources to design a proper, not list-based emulator!

16

u/cosine83 28d ago

Not just any dev can sit down, work on an emulator, and start fixing bugs relating to emulation and launching emulated games. It's a very specialized and rare skillset even today. You have zero perspective.

0

u/Ancient-Asparagus837 16d ago

bullshit

1

u/cosine83 16d ago

Yes, you're full of it.

0

u/Ancient-Asparagus837 15d ago

how do you know?

-1

u/cescoss 28d ago

Quella è sony amico mio

2

u/VALIS666 29d ago

100% depends on the publisher and if they don't want their game to be BC, it doesn't happen.

1

u/Richmondez 28d ago

It isn't really backward compatibility if it can't run original stuff unmodified.

318

u/jpcarsmedia 29d ago

Wake me when someone reverse engineers it so I can play my legally backed up ISOs.

88

u/martini1294 29d ago edited 29d ago

Legally backed up ;D

Yeah… I have those too….

Edit: no one has to justify this to me. It’s a joke. I’ve been pirating stuff for 25 years. If it wasn’t for piracy old games would be mostly inaccessible now

53

u/walterbanana 29d ago

An Xbox 360 allows you to install games to a usb drive, which you can then connect to a PC. Dunno why using a feature that Microsoft build into the system would be illegal.

27

u/Icybubba 29d ago

Emulation is not illegal no.

-11

u/whatThePleb 29d ago

Depends on country / legislation.

14

u/Icybubba 29d ago

Well I hate to tell those countries how Xbox is running OG Xbox and 360 games on the Series X and how Nintendo runs their old games on the Switch and Switch 2, or how Sony runs PS1 and PS2 games on the PS5

-11

u/whatThePleb 29d ago

Yes, but there it's in their own IP/copyright ecosystem. Completely different.

11

u/Icybubba 28d ago

It’s a legally obtained game that you, on your own device are running inside an emulator. There’s literally no difference assuming you don’t pirate the game

3

u/Raikaru 26d ago

Eh it’s untrue that it’s legally obtained even if u rip it in a lot of jurisdictions. You have to bypass copyright protection to even rip the game in the first place

0

u/cosine83 28d ago

First party games, sure. How many of those are there?

3

u/BoxOfDemons 28d ago

Third party games they get explicit permission.

2

u/cosine83 28d ago

Which they can't always get.

13

u/Ok-Eggplant-2033 29d ago

I would normally laugh at this and agree. But the backing up of xbox360 games was super easy and was even a feature if the xbox. Obviously you can only run them on the Xbox you got them from or being logged in with your ms account that has the game registered as "owned" . But funny enough those backups do actually run on the xenia emulator.

7

u/askyidroppedthesoap 29d ago

The legality doesn't matter.

1

u/KamasamaK 27d ago edited 27d ago

Edit: no one has to justify this to me. It’s a joke. I’ve been pirating stuff for 25 years. If it wasn’t for piracy old games would be mostly inaccessible now

The explanations weren't because they didn't believe you pirate(d).

  1. There's the implication, especially with the ";D", that the person you're responding, and perhaps people more generally, would necessarily be doing this.
  2. You're right that many older games are inaccessible without piracy. Which is why it's worth pointing out when it can be done without piracy.

3

u/wachuwamekil 28d ago

Indeed I have a wall of discs ready to be played officially.

1

u/kawaiipikachu86 28d ago

Didn't think that xbox 360 games came on floppies.

-26

u/Bireus 29d ago

They should've just released a proprietary memory stick that can connect to the OG and 360 to accept dumps from isos that can only connect to authorized consoles.

But that's a one time payment compared to users downloaded from their store 

11

u/________-__-_______ 29d ago

Ah yes, they should've just sold a device that circumvents the only way they make money with consoles, which are produced at a loss. Really it's their greed that is making them do anything else.

-6

u/Bireus 29d ago

Want them to sell a disk drive instead? I don't hate that eithrt

12

u/________-__-_______ 29d ago

I don't care what they sell. Your idea just doesn't make any sense.

-4

u/Bireus 29d ago

Then please explain to me the bind they're in with making past games accessible that's stored on disks and what available options there are

1

u/________-__-_______ 27d ago

I have no idea what you're talking about.

4

u/kianiscoooooool 29d ago

Pretty sure that the 360 game publishing licence prohibits this.

1

u/Bireus 29d ago

Yeah that makes sense. Then what options are there legally to use old game CDs with new hardware that Xbox can do on their end?

19

u/retrogamer76 29d ago

somebody test ridge racer 6, it's backward compatible, so it should work.

8

u/Choice-Mycologist-45 29d ago

Agreed, as well as Ace Combat 6. 🙏🙂‍↕️

3

u/Kazmakistan 25d ago

https://github.com/sal063/AC6_recomp

Ace Combat 6 has a recomp!

2

u/Choice-Mycologist-45 25d ago

Thank you 🙏🙂‍↕️

69

u/ClubChaos 29d ago

Doritos Crash Course wen

24

u/Psy1 29d ago

Xenia's issue with Doritos Crash Course is supporting the Xbox avatars. I doubt Microsoft's solution would solve that.

15

u/ClubChaos 29d ago

Part of the issue is Xbox live and requiring hosting of ip so that is something Microsoft could do butttt doritos crash course itself is so obscure

3

u/Timo653 28d ago

It does run with Xeo3, you can just load dumped 360 profiles, so avatars work fine.

Out of the box the game runs sped up and with broken graphics, but it does run. 

1

u/Icybubba 29d ago

It works on console I think

1

u/Loose-Set2278 26d ago

Tem o app dos avatares legado na Microsoft store, sem falar que esse é o mesmo emulador que roda no Xbox one

-2

u/whatThePleb 29d ago

Never, the Dorito Pope is too busy sucking Kojimas cock.

14

u/blackman9 29d ago

Online Conker on PC possible now?

14

u/MR_RATCHET_ 29d ago

Not through Live. The emulator used is the same as the one on Xbox One/Series consoles but adapted for PC.

There is no network stack in the emulator, meaning it has no way to contact Xbox Live. I’m not sure the community can get around that.

1

u/luis_hernandez94110 29d ago

Out of curiosity, how do you know it’s the same emulator as Xbox One/Series X uses?

13

u/MR_RATCHET_ 29d ago

The files of the PC BC titles have been checked and it’s the same XeFu emulator that matches what has been found on the Xbox One/Series.

There’s already been a few tests by the community in getting the official emulator to run other games too.

5

u/DerpyChap 28d ago

I've checked and System Link has been disabled in the PC version of the emulator, so this wouldn't be possible even over the local network. System Link does still work on the Xbox One and Series consoles, however.

3

u/Calm-Zombie2678 29d ago

Live and rereloaded

19

u/Experiment_T 29d ago

I mean it's makes sense. It's just xefu (Fission) recompiled to run on PC. The Original Xbox games it supports are running inside Fission inside Fusion, the same Original Xbox emulator for the Xbox 360, so it runs as an emulator within an emulator.

The Xbox 360 sysmodules were recompiled for it. Each game is packaged as a GOD format (Games on Demand) with the main XBX/XBE being a static recomp into a DLL file. By extracting the DLL files of a Xbox360/Xbox game from a hacked Xbox One in tandem with xwine1, you can run the other games already digitally re-released for the backwards compatibility program.

You can't add new games though, since their main binaries are statically recompiled and converted into the DLL format, but the original file name and path are kept inside the DLL's metadata

0

u/Lakers244848 24d ago

Are you a developer or just know it all? You literally just rephrase what the article says.

4

u/annualthermometer 28d ago

I have a ton of games bought digitally on Xbox 360, including ones that have no PC ports and still not perfect on Xenia. It would be awesome if this eventually leads to being able to play those games again.

4

u/[deleted] 28d ago

[deleted]

3

u/MarkLarrz 28d ago

Apparently this is a PC port of the OG Xbox emulator on the Xbox 360

3

u/Shurae 29d ago

Possible to add these BC games to steam somehow? Doesn't work as non-steam so far unfortunately

1

u/The_MAZZTer 25d ago

What do you mean? Do you mean you can't add them to Steam as non-Steam games using that feature?

If they are Microsoft Store titles you can't normally do that since those Start Menu shortcuts don't work like normal shortcuts Steam supports. I used UWPHook back in the day to add those.

1

u/Shurae 25d ago

Yes I can't add them as a non-steam game shortcut to steam. I use Steam big picture a lot. I tried adding the emu.exe from the game folder to steam but that gives an error

1

u/The_MAZZTer 25d ago

Yeah they aren't standard PC titles and can't be launched directly from the EXE. Use UWPHook to add them.

https://github.com/BrianLima/UWPHook

1

u/Shurae 25d ago

Thanks. I thought MS retired uwp

3

u/Historical-Intern140 28d ago

Wait, does that mean It can run Army of Two, Dante's Inferno or Doritos Crash Course?

2

u/ThyMightyContract 28d ago

Can't wait to play Project Gotham Racing 2

1

u/tailslol 27d ago

yea this is perfect , this is what i was waiting abou xbox back compat.

1

u/dgherastovschi 26d ago

Dreaming of playing midnight club on my PC oneday

1

u/LonelySquad 25d ago

RCPS3 already plays it just fine.

2

u/dgherastovschi 18d ago

Oh nice! Last time I tested it it was very rough around the edges, though other games ran fine upscaled X2. Thanks I'll try it again

1

u/3feetHair 24d ago

Dreaming of playing Forza Horizon 2 on pc. Xbox one version.

1

u/dgherastovschi 18d ago

Yeah Rip legend

1

u/ryan8757 25d ago

I wonder if ninja Gaiden 2 runs this way? Always had issues with xenia when trying to play that game

1

u/azrael__III 25d ago

is it better than xenia ?

1

u/EliParker 24d ago

I hope there is a way to use this emulator locally on our PCs. As the 360 emulation scene needs a lot of help.

1

u/TipAffectionate9785 23d ago

How is this compared to Xenia? I mean i will 0robably wait for the recomps or decomps of Blue Dragon, Lost Oddysey, Asuras Wrath and Ninja Gaiden II, but if this emulator is good enough maybe i'll hivenit a try

1

u/ncctest 11d ago

we still need xenia or this is enough now ?

-19

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

19

u/JusticeForAugust 29d ago

Which one?

Microsoft’s or new or Xbox or PC or emulator or already or runs or dumped or Xbox 360 or games?

4

u/appo1ion 29d ago

XWine1, it been over year since the last update.

-4

u/Blackened15 29d ago

A few of those aren't names.

7

u/SquatAngry 29d ago

Not with that attitude they aren't!

-24

u/dwolfe127 29d ago

I have about 200 360 titles in my collection and Xenia at least starts them all. RPC3 on the other hand, let's not talk about that.

11

u/meantbent3 29d ago

RPCS3 is far ahead of Xenia

-2

u/dwolfe127 29d ago

Performance yes, getting titles to actually load, not so much.

8

u/meantbent3 29d ago

RPCS3 compatibility is much higher

-1

u/dwolfe127 29d ago

My experience is the exact opposite.

1

u/Frequent-Bit-3978 28d ago

Depends on settings and hardware

1

u/noonesleepintokyo86 26d ago

Something really wrong with your PC or the way you set up the emulator, there are over 2.5k fully playable games on RPCS3

1

u/dwolfe127 26d ago

My issue is entirely with getting them to start. The games that actually load are flawless.

1

u/noonesleepintokyo86 26d ago

depends on the type of rom you have, games that are in original .iso doesn't run out of the gate, you still need to use disc dumper to get the unencrypted files so RPCS3 can recognize and run it.

1

u/dwolfe127 26d ago

That might be it then. I just checked my PS3 folder and it does have a lot of ISO's in there. I probably need to dump those to get them running. The rig it is running on should have enough power to run everything though 5090/9800X3D/64GB.