Why Bother With The Xenia Emulator? Why not just use a 360 or XboxOne / S or X? (Outrun2 XBLA, PGR3)
6#xeniaemulator #xbox360 #backwardscompatibility
Backwards compatibility on Xbox consoles is a commendable effort by Microsoft to preserve gaming history, allowing players to enjoy titles from older generations on newer hardware. However, it is not without flaws. During the initial marketing of the series X it was hinted at that Microsoft wanted to treat the Xbox as a single gaming platform with all the backlog of games accessible on the new console.
Yet the compatibility turned out to be quite selective, meaning only a curated list of games from the original Xbox and Xbox 360 eras are supported and a lot of stellar titles have never made the cut.
I was perfectly happy with my XboxOne but I was foolish enough to believe the things hinted at with the Series X. My wife and I were foolish enough to heavily inverst in XboxLiveArcade on the Xbox360 as quite a few of our friends also had 360s and it was great comparing highscores etc. So with the promise of these games being accessible on the new series X with the whole platform basically becoming a single platform with legacy games included was very alluring.
For quite some time the Xbox360 still got support but when the online store for the 360 closed logging into XBoxLive on the 360 became impossible. This actually had quite an effect on a huge number of DLC/Downloaded games on my 360 as about half of them ended up without their DRM/License and either reverted to a demo state or simply state that logging into Microsoft Live is necessary for these games to run. I was certain I'd set my 360 as my 'main 360'''unit so it would preserve the licenses even when I am offline. But as it stands this was not to last. The games that did 'loose' their license seem to be a random bunch with even games being singled out by this 'feature' that belong to a 2-3 game series that were all downloaded and paid for originally.
So this leaves many titles inaccessible, and not only niche or less popular games. Microsoft used their own in house emulators on the 360, XboxOne and Series S/X for the backwards compatibility and the reliance on emulation does lead to performance issues or bugs in certain games, detracting from the experience. Licensing and legal constraints further complicated the process, as Microsoft stopped securing the rights to re-release older titles, which wasn't always feasible and not many people were actually using the backwards compatibility feature to begin with - according to Microsoft.
With help of an open-source Xbox 360 emulator called Xenia. I can still play my Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games that have become functionally unplayable due to the closure of the Xbox 360 store and its associated DRM server checks. As my 360 shows now mMany XBLA games require a license verification process that is no longer possible without the now-defunct servers. What still is unclear is that only part of the games on my 360 seem to be affected by this.
Xenia emulates the Xbox 360 environment on a PC, allowing users to play their legally obtained games without needing to connect to Microsoft's servers. While it provides a lifeline for preserving these games. You can hook up a USB storage device to your Xbox360 and move installed games to that device. On the PC this device can be read and the directories contain the games that Xenia can use. This is the case for downloaded games as well as disc games that you install on your harddrive - you can use your 360 to 'rip' the games to harddrive and use those files within the emulator. You can do this with a stock Xbox360.
I am still using my original Xbox and my xbox360 for playing those games that aren't properly emulated by either Xemu or Xenia. But it's quite good to see these emulators continue to improve over time.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction why Xenia can help with restoring accessibility to previously paid for digitally downloaded games
00:00:58 - Example of what is happening on my Xbox 360 and the DRM
00:04:06 - Outrun2 Arcade Online XBLA (DRM failed on my 360)
00:27:10 - Project Gotham Racing (Disc) (only runs on the 360)**
01:08:34 - The End
** because of the music not becoming muted even though I selected that in the menu I had to distort the audio to precent © ️ shenanigans
Hardware & Software used:
Xbox360 Elite
Samsung USB SSD
PC Ryzen 5000s, RTX 3000s, Xbox-X controller
OBS
Davinci Resolve
Enjoy & thanks for watching
LactobacillusPrime
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