r/EmulationOnAndroid • u/Tricky_Ad9669 • 17h ago
Question Why is xbox360 emulation hard.
I get that ps3 emulation is hard because of the cell broadband engine cpu architecture introduced by sony in 2006 but the xbox360 had a cpu similar to pc, then why is xbox360 emulation still hard. Is it because the emulator isn't matured?
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u/zeek609 Thor Max/Quest 3/Y700 Gen 5 16h ago
The 360 is architecturally really weird. Emulators must reproduce 3 CPU cores, 6 hardware threads & synchronisation and caching between them.
The graphics API is very low level and Sony helped massively by providing things like Linux support.
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u/browflutter 4h ago
the way you explained all those cores and threads actually makes it sound even more chaotic than I thought
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u/Own_Perspective4825 16h ago
The 360 had a triple-core PowerPC processor, not an x86-64 CPU. The ARM SoC in your smartphone or the Switch is more similar to a desktop CPU than the 360's is.
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u/Stylith 16h ago
Along with the other answers, most xbox games were already available on PC so there wasn't really ever a need to emulate. PS3 had a lot of exclusives so emulation was a priority.
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u/votemarvel Poco F6 - Sony Xperia 1 V 15h ago
What was annoying for me was that they never released Fable II on PC, which was my favourite of the series.
Now there's a fan port of the game and all I need to do is try and get it working in a PC emulator on Android.
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u/KoopaKlaw 15h ago
Xbox 360 didn't "use a similar CPU to a PC, it used a similar CPU to a very specific type of PC.
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u/Dummy_Kruger 15h ago
I'm having a great time with 360 emulation on Android. Much better than PS3 emulation
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u/TheOriginalKrampus Poco F7 Pro (SD 8 Gen 3) 7h ago edited 7h ago
This is what I came here to say.
I tried Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on my phone with ARMSX3 a few days ago. Was a stuttery mess and the audio during cutscenes was awful.
Found out that MGR was also released on 360 so I tried it on Xendroid. Was like night and day. Cutscenes not perfect but a lot better. The first level I was averaging around 30fps at native resolution, where in ARMSX3 I was getting in the teens with lots of stuttering. Managed to make it through the first Metal Gear fight (rules of nature and whatnot) with a few dips into the teens, but it was very playable. The next cutscenes were kind of bad though. Still, amazing to even be able to play XBox 360 on my phone.
I'm sure that PS3 emulation will get better on Android. ARMSX3 is amazing at what it has accomplished so far, just that MGR is a particularly demanding game for that generation. But XBox 360 emulation is also coming into its own. It's surprisingly good.
I can't wait to try Gears 1-2. Even though I have Gears 4-5 for PC and they play much better with a mouse and keyboard. I remember playing the original Gears with some of my college buddies 18 years ago on 360, and it still has a special place in my heart.
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u/Dummy_Kruger 7h ago
The fact that it just boots and you can compress the games makes it way ahead of armsx3 atm which is ironic considering on Windows it's the opposite but xenia is improving quickly now
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u/TheOriginalKrampus Poco F7 Pro (SD 8 Gen 3) 7h ago
What's the difference between Xenia and Xendroid? Are they forks? I've only eve tried the former.
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u/No_Fill2676 16h ago
guess what else is hard
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u/Tricky_Ad9669 16h ago
?
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u/No_Fill2676 16h ago
my life :(
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u/whiskyB0y Edit Your Flair 16h ago edited 16h ago
I thought you wanna gonna say your weener but that took a dark and gritty turn. Are you okay bro? Don't let emulation fill a void that cannot be filled by material things.
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u/RGamer1978 14h ago
Come to think of it, what happening with Xbox 360 mobile and xendroid. They haven't had an update for over 2 months I hope they haven't abandoned the projects. It would be an absolute shame .
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u/JeffyGoldblumsPen_15 10h ago
It's still new to mobile. You're expecting leaps and bounds in what a few months?
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u/electricalco 16h ago
Well you can get real deep into the issue...
BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
the reality is simple... Sony provides offline updates/software for the PS3 available to download
All you gotta do from there is just software translation then you can get into the deeper stuff like hardware CPU ect ...
Xbox never offered any type of offline support for updates nor software soooooo technically in other words you have to create a software that's able to be a translator as well an emulator .... To emulate the 360 software in order to get a game started... Once you got both then you can get into specifics..
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u/zeek609 Thor Max/Quest 3/Y700 Gen 5 53m ago
This isn't even remotely true.
Microsoft offered the exact same thing for the 360, dashboard updates to be installed over USB, they also came packaged in discs. Exactly the same as the PS3/PSP model.
The reason is simply that there's less demand for 360 emulation and it's architecturally more complicated.
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/xbox-360/console/system-updates-info
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u/extreme-g_fanatic 4h ago
Yeah it still needs more development time to improve the stability and performance optimization just like every emulators.
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u/Radiant_Display457 16h ago
I don't think it's hard 🤔 the PS3 one yeah that's the hardest of them all
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