Is there a working Xbox emulator out there?

SassmasterMaxie · 08-29-2019, 04:18 AM #1

I've had no luck finding one that works. I've tried a few but none seem to be working for me. I have a dumped copy of Jet Set Radio Future that I've been using for testing but so far I've not found one that works. Has anyone found a working original Xbox emulator anywhere?

**AnyOldName3** · 08-29-2019, 05:14 AM #2

The Xbox has had less attention from emulator developers than other consoles as most of its games had a PC port anyway. It's also harder to emulate than might be expected due to things like having a more complicated CPU architecture and instruction set. Taken together, these mean that there isn't a good Xbox emulator out there.

LDClaudius · 08-29-2019, 05:41 AM #3

I think the closest emulation you can get is CXBX-Reloaded. You can check it out here: https://github.com/Cxbx-Reloaded/Cxbx-Reloaded

Keep in mind that not all original Xbox game currently work at the time of this writing. I'm pretty sure the emulation dev are currently working on getting the Xbox game to support the emulation.

**mbc07** · 08-29-2019, 08:15 AM #4

The only ones still actively developed nowadays are CXBX-Reloaded and XQEMU. CXBX-Reloaded uses a HLE approach, while XQEMU uses a LLE approach. Right now, CXBX-Reloaded has better game compatibility than XQEMU, but I personally think that on long term, XQEMU is probably going to take the upper hand when you consider the actual Xbox hardware and XQEMU's LLE approach...

DrHouse64 · 08-29-2019, 11:14 PM #5

I remember seeing a post of a xbox emulator dev that explains why even if xbox hardware is almost a PC, it's very hard to figure out how to emulate it. I can't remember where tho.
It mostly said that no one really know how to emulate a Intel CPU, and that the NVidia GPU was a custom PC GPU with little to no public documentation available.

**mbc07** · 08-30-2019, 03:26 AM #6

The CPU, although custom, still is x86 at its core so it can be easily virtualized, no actual need for JIT or similar. The issue lies on the GPU (which also integrates the functionality of the chipset) and on the "MCPX" audio processor, which were co-developed between NVIDIA and Microsoft and there's little to no documentation about those chips...

SassmasterMaxie · 09-02-2019, 03:52 AM #7

Thanks for all your help. I'll give CXBX-Reloaded a try and see how I go with that.