
Xbox 360 Emulator Research Project - striking
https://github.com/benvanik/xenia/
======
mmastrac
I wonder if we'll see viable emulators for PS4/XboxOne sooner than we did for
the previous generation given that they are both x86-based (and the PS4 using
FreeBSD as well).

The original Xbox hasn't seen a lot of emulation activity either -- I found
that strange. It feels like we might lose an entire generation of games to
bitrot.

~~~
yoodenvranx
I am more worried about some small but amazing Flash games. Currently it is
still possible to play them in the browser, but what about in 5 or 10 years. I
image there might be some kind of emulator which wraps tje flash player and
the game in a single exe so it can be played independent of a browser.

~~~
AshleysBrain
Check out Shumway - it can play SWFs in the browser without using Flash:
[http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/](http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/)

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jzelinskie
This is way further along than I would have expected. There are some small
games already playable [0]!

[0]: [http://xenia.jp/compatibility/](http://xenia.jp/compatibility/)

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voltagex_
Come help test demos from the marketplace - it's reasonably easy once you copy
the content to USB. See [https://github.com/xenia-project/game-
compatibility/issues](https://github.com/xenia-project/game-
compatibility/issues)

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jjkmk
This is really cool, the fact that MS was able to build an 360 emulator that
worked for xbone was really a huge engineering feat. Will be interesting to
follow xenia's progress.

~~~
jlawer
I believe that the xbox one doesn't emulate for backwards compatibility,
instead it downloads a new version of the executable that was built for x86
and uses the game content from the original disks.

~~~
fernandotakai
nope, the xbox one emulates the xbox 360 OS -- and the games themselves run
inside the xbox 360 OS[1]

for the game, it's like running on a normal 360. and that's why things like
multiplayer work. [2]

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/18/xbox-one-backward-
compati...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/18/xbox-one-backward-
compatibility-how-it-works/)

[2] [http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/backward-
compatibility](http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/backward-compatibility)

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andyfleming
Is this compatible with the Open Emu app?

~~~
astrange
No, but if it can run as an x86-64 OS X app then it can be ported without too
much work.

Porting to an OE core is kind of invasive since it replaces the entire "app"
part of an emulator including the event loop, sound output and windowing. So
OpenGL renderers also have to be capable of rendering to a framebuffer and
such. Also, the requirement for x86-64 is reasonable for OS X but excludes
some Windows-based emu codebases, notably PCSX2.

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curiousjorge
why is it that we always need so much more CPU and GPU power to emulate an
older, fixed, lower power requiring console?

~~~
jessewmc
[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-
power-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-
mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/)

This might be a good place to start, it's a long read but pretty interesting.

~~~
makomk
Note that in some ways, more modern consoles may actually be easier (or at
least have different problems) - there are a whole bunch of abstraction layers
that stop programmers from doing weird cycle-accurate tricks, and they don't
have the development time for it anyway.

~~~
jayrox
Modern may be "easier" because they are being built on top of hardware that is
similar to what is found in modern consumer pc systems. That's no to say they
are nessessarily the same but being x86 based means they have many of the same
instruction sets.

