A few days ago, a rumor surfaced, suggesting that the XBOX and XENIA CANARY emulator team were working with Microsoft to make an official Xbox and Xbox 360 emulator. But the Xenia team has now debunked this. No. They are not working with Microsoft on any project.
The Xenia team said they are not working with Microsoft at all. Microsoft already uses its own emulators to make older games work on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles. So even if Microsoft wanted to bring those games to PC, they wouldn’t need help from Xenia. Or at least what the Xenia team claims.
And that is that. This is coming straight from the horse’s mouth. The official response is that the Xenia team is not working with MS for any Xbox emulator.
Now I know some may say that the Xenia team is trying to hide the truth. After all, they may have signed an NDA with MS. If they did, they can’t really say anything about it due to it. So, it makes sense to say that they are not associated with MS in any way.
Point is that right now, the official word is that the Xenia team is not working with MS. The only source of this rumor is an individual. It’s not coming from multiple sources. So, I’d take the word of the Xenia team over the leaker. At least for now.
If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Xenia is an impressive X360 emulator on PC. However, it’s nowhere close to the emulator MS used for the X360 backward compatibility program of Xbox One.
So, while the Xenia team is not working with MS on an emulator, this does not mean that MS is not looking for ways to make the original Xbox games playable on modern devices. It could happen, given Microsoft’s current shift of focus. But if this happens, it won’t have anything to do with the Xenia team.
All in all, we might see an emulator from MS that can emulate the Xbox and X360 games on PC. Or a streaming way via which you can experience the old Xbox games. Given the already established X360 backward compatibility program, it should be somehow easy to bring it to PC. At least in theory. However, I don’t expect these old games to have major enhancements. They might have unlocked framerates and resolutions. This will be an easy tweak. However, you should not expect better textures or higher-quality 3D models.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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