TR Forums

I hope this isnt considered a topic worth banning, but I have a few questions. There are currently two XBOX emulators that have been publicly released, and they are showing that it can be done. What I am wondering is, why has it taken so long? If someone has good programming skill and the will to do it, there arent many roadblocks. The Hardware is basically the stuff we have had for years (a X86 cpu, and I believe a GF4 has all the features of the XBOX GPU). So basically we dont need to emulate the hardware, but just provide a software layer to trick the games into thinking they are running on the xbox version of win2k and direct3d (again, should not be terribly hard with when you are a skilled programmer, especially if you are familiar with direct3d). The sound is also running through DirectX so nothing big there.

There is one, it's called Xeon.

Oh. It kicks ass.

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/new ... 8-2003.php

efnet

#x-bins

I'm sure MS has tried very hard to keep these emulators out of people's hands. A closed system is what keeps the license fees rolling in.

MS can try, but the XBOX is one of the easiest system to emulate. It should be easier than even the older consoles from the early 90's. The only thing really stopping such an emulator from mass use is the fact that most people dont have computers capable of running n64 games at a decent framerate (which is good, the smaller the userbase the less resources will be spent on erroding it). Writing a software layer has been done, and now it just has to be optimized and bug tested. I say a year from now, most xbox games will be fully emulated on GF4 hardware and a 2Ghz cpu.

Twisted thing is an XBox's hardware isn't that expensive so the point of an emu is? I'd actually rather have a mod-chip and Xbox. Then I can run Linux on it, and have my PC for PC things. Now the MAME and Nintendo emulators make more sense because of the pain of cartridges, but XBox? I'm not really interested yet.....

Why wouldn't Microsoft want this sort of thing?

They lose LOTS of money from all the Xboxes they sell, hoping to make it back on license fees, which come from the game developers...

So a computer with a DVD drive, a 2GHz P4 Northwood (the Tualatins have 512k cache IIRC) and a GF4 (+) will handle all Xbox games, and MS lose no money on selling an Xbox, but sell millions of games and reap a **** of license fee...

Or am I missing something?
-Mole

Most people who run emulators don't own the game. Think about it, if the user is going to go through the trouble of installing software to run these games as to not pay $179 for an Xbox, he probably isn't going to pay upwards of $50 to play the games. Plus the agreement MS has w/developers is that MS will do whatever it can to prevent people from running pirated games. Once you have an emulator, that control aspect goes out the window. The death of Dreamcast was caused in part by rampant pirating. I'm sure there are honest people who run emulators out there but they're probably the tiny minority.