Original Xbox Emulator Running on Switch?

Xbox Emulator

A few videos and images have appeared online, showing the original Xbox up and running on the Nintendo Switch console. The video comes from hobbyist developer and modder “Voxel9”. In the video, they manage to get a few things up and running, including the first Halo. Of course, this looks pretty amazing, but until someone replicates the results, we have to take it with a tiny pinch of salt.

How Did They Do It?

While I’m always sceptical, there’s merit to this hack. The emulator was compiled in Linux Command Prompt first. The XQEMU emulator is an open-source Xbox project. However, what games do run only run smoothly on high-end PCs. The Switch struggles hard, and the video was sped up 4x to show what it would look like at full speed. Even more amusing is that he’s playing using a PS4 controller, to play Xbox games on his Switch, using Linux. Now that’s emulation!

Exploit

The hardware-based exploit for the Nintendo Switch was revealed last year. Since then, people have had plenty of time to crack it open and do what they want with the hardware. Sure, this wasn’t a playable experience with Xbox, but it just goes to show what can and cannot be done. Who knows, perhaps someone will find ways of improving the performance given enough time.

Video

Yep, you read the title right, XQEMU successfully compiles and runs on a Nintendo Switch running the new updated Linux4Tegra Ubuntu.

More specifically, I’m running mborgerson’s performance WIP branch, as it currently contains some much more faster optimizations than the master XQEMU branch.

For those wondering what exactly I was using for input, I had to use a PS4 controller, as joy-cons connected as a pair don’t appear to have an SDL2 gamepad mapping for them, making them undetectable by the emulator. – Voxel9