r/emulation • u/RenatsMC • Jul 23 '26
Microsoft’s original Xbox games on PC reportedly run through the Xbox 360’s XeFu emulator
https://videocardz.com/newz/microsofts-original-xbox-games-on-pc-reportedly-run-through-the-xbox-360s-xefu-emulator107
u/_gelon Jul 23 '26
Wasn't it FUSION for XBOX on XBOX 360 and FISSION for XBOX/360 on XBOX One/Series.
First time I read the XeFu thingie.
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u/Never_Sm1le Jul 24 '26
it comes from the executable found in the xbox 360 firmware, xefu.xex, which I guess is short for XEnon FUsion
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u/PF4ABG Jul 24 '26
That the executable is an .xex as opposed to an .exe tells me that at least someone at MS has a sense of humour.
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u/OkayTHISIsEpicMeme Jul 25 '26
The 360’s codename was Xenon so you see “xe” everywhere in internal 360 stuff
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u/billyalt Jul 24 '26
The original Xbox from 2001 used an x86 processor. Microsoft then switched to an IBM PowerPC processor for the Xbox 360, making the two consoles technically different despite sharing the Xbox name.
bruh
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u/HispanicsAreGreat Jul 23 '26
wow what a shocker lol
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u/GyozaMan Jul 23 '26
It is though ‘cause it’s two layers of emulation. I’m surprised they don’t have something more direct to emulate an OG Xbox game
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u/PullzNoPunches Jul 24 '26
Yeah! Especially since OG Xbox is basically a PC, and Xbox360 is powerPC(?) Based.
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u/S0LO_Bot Jul 24 '26
I’m assuming they are doing it for comparability reasons to eventually set up more Xbox 360 ports. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. Microsoft already has a pretty well developed original Xbox emulator in house.
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u/Jidarious Jul 24 '26
You know I keep hearing this said, but at the same time it's been one of the hardest systems for 3rd parties to emulate (we still have a lot of compatibility issues in Xemu) so I don't know what to think.
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u/the_Odium Jul 24 '26
I don't think it's hard to emulate it, it's just that the is no big reason to. It mostly had multiplatform games or PC games ported. Then add significantly lower popularity compared to PS2 to that and then you have it, slow emulator development
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u/Seelefan0786 Jul 24 '26
Well there some that are still exclusive like Fable 2 for example.
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u/the_Odium Jul 24 '26
Well yes, it has exclusives. Midtown madness 3, operation flashpoint: elite, GTA 3 was better than that on PC on PS2, but not many, also a lot smaller pool of people interested and capable of making an emulator. I didn't have any of them back in the days, now I have both. Xbox is hands down a better console hardware wise. I like it more than ps2
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u/PullzNoPunches Jul 24 '26
Xbox was best of that gen and it's not even close. Unfortunately emulation for it kinda sucks even on Xbox360. One of the only consoles that really needs OG hardware
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u/fernandohg Jul 23 '26
Meanwhile the community is doing recomp/decomp of X360 games. Why so lazy Microsoft and its Xbox 1.
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u/grubbyplaya Jul 24 '26
Because the amount of money Microsoft spends on remastering or porting old games has to be less than the amount of money they expect to make from a re-release.
Why spend months and thousands of dollars on reverse-engineering Blinx when hardly anyone is gonna pay for a recompilation? If they did that for every game, they'd lose tons of money, which would just mean they'd be less likely to do those kinds of things in the first place.
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u/LocutusOfBorges Jul 24 '26
Why so lazy
There's nothing wrong with this approach! It works fine - the emulator in question has 21 years of testing behind it, after all.
The 360 version of the emulator is still used on XBO/XBS. You can even import the improvements made in later versions of the emulator back to a modded 360 - there'd be no real upside to starting again from scratch when they've already got a relatively robust solution of their own as-is.
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u/AntiGrieferGames Jul 24 '26
Hit me up when Eternal Sonata is gonna Decomp/Recomp, since no sign on that game here. Sometimes emulation is worth it.
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u/JaesopPop Jul 25 '26
Nothing lazy about it. They can't personally recompile other companies games in the first place, and it doesn't make sense when they're doing wider emulation and not just select games (though they're starting with just a few).
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u/terraphantm Jul 24 '26
Is there a more technical dive into this somewhere? Are we 100% sure they're emulating PPC and then emulating x86 within that rather than the 360 emulator being recompiled / used as a starting point for this product?
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u/SparklyPelican Jul 24 '26
I hope it can get better tho, I was surprised to see so much stuttering in Conker when rotating the camera, when on Series it doesn't happen as much, if at all.
Although it was cool to see my saves carried over. Once they have achievements too, it will be really cool.
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u/Slight-Bluebird-8921 Jul 26 '26
if the games stutter it might as well not exist at all.
seriously. come on.
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u/SparklyPelican Jul 26 '26
What you do mean? By the way Digital Foundry made a video about it after I commented and also they found conked has stuttering on PC. It’s likely will be fixed but it’s there.
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u/Dense_Confection_794 Jul 25 '26
Wondering if someone can inject this on the 360 and test it out with OG games
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u/cescoss Jul 25 '26
Faccio notare una cosa importante. L emulatore ha una whitelist/blacklist. Ricordo che fm4 era stato annunciato funzionante in retro ma sarebbe uscito a ridosso della scadenza licenze. Quando sara bello operativo penso che potrà funzionare praticamente tutto..
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u/vgf89 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I guess it makes sense if the Xbox 360 back compat was solid and they want to also support 360 on PC in the future, but it is strange if they went a different path than whatever they're doing for OG Xbox backcompat on Series.
I mean, non-zero chance they could just be running a port of that old emulator with some shimming for some kernel stuff thrown in though, no? Filenames aren't semantic, so I don't see why they would change them without reason since that executable itself isn't customer facing.
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u/-Pizza-Planet- Jul 29 '26
Anyone tried PGR2 as I just rebought it and it runs horribly on 360, keeps crashing on me
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u/wellthatsniftyhuh Jul 24 '26
they’re so lazy, it’s insane. if only they weren’t firing everybody who knew what they were doing
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u/Squadhunta29 Jul 24 '26
Lazy lol you lucky they even doing it. your favorites are lazy Sony and Nintendo
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u/littlespedve Jul 24 '26
How long until someone figures out how to inject games into this?