# Xbox Original vs Wii for Softmodding



## M-Doggy (Aug 8, 2014)

Hi all,

I'm looking into softmodding the Xbox original or the Wii and was wondering which system is overall better for softmodding?

Any information would help such as which system has emulators running better on it, graphics look better, ease of softmodding the console, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you very much


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## Foxi4 (Aug 8, 2014)

_"Overall better"_ is a rather wide spectrum right there. I'd say the Wii is _"better"_ simply because it's easier to softmod and has a more unified Homebrew infrastructure thanks to Homebrew Channel, but the Xbox ain't half bad either - I recently bought one myself.

The Wii has the edge over the Xbox in terms of horsepower as far as I know, but the Xbox can display in 720p and 1080i which the Wii cannot do, so the image might be crisper provided the application supports those resolutions.

It's a pretty close match, but I'm leaning towards the Wii since I have more experience with it.


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## DinohScene (Aug 8, 2014)

For ease, go with the Wii.
Wireless controllers and what not.
Also, it's hackable with an SD card.
The xbox needs a game and a hacked save or a hotswap to get it softmodded.


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## Chary (Aug 8, 2014)

Original Xbox requires a few extras than the Wii, since you need the gameshark, memory card, and compatible game. The Wii softmod just needs an SD card. With the Xbox the emulators have features such as filters, and in my opinion, it looks nicer than the Wii's emulators. The Wii is pretty simple and intuitive though, which makes for just quick and easy access. On the Xbox, you can get some N64 games working pretty decently, but on the Wii, you can just run VC n64 games perfectly. SNES/Genesis/older stuff run equally between the two, imo. If you want an entertainment setup going, it'd vote the xbox. If you want games, go for the wii.


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## emmanu888 (Aug 8, 2014)

Between the two, if you want HD videos and games, go with the Xbox. If HD content isn't your cup of tea, the Wii is better.


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## GBA rocks (Aug 8, 2014)

Xbox original is loud as hell and chug power 
Wii is dead silent and sip power

Xbox original no first party wireless joypads (third party only)
Wii wireless remotes plenty available

In terms of games on a BC Wii with dios mios plus Wii games you can basically have something to play for the rest of your life with the GC + Wii library. And we're talking native fullspeed games. There's not even time left to play choppy frameskip emulated games.

Wii easier to softmod and manage USB 2TB bus powered HDD in FAT32 compared to internal PATA partition madness in xbox.

So used BC Wii all the way. Xbox only when you get tired of GC+Wii games. Probably never.

And I wanna reiterate xbox is unbearably loud for today standards.


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## emmanu888 (Aug 8, 2014)

Um why is this both in the Xbox thread and the Wii thread ?


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## migles (Aug 8, 2014)

The image quality on wii is very poor :/ if you are using an hd tv...

but its easy to softmod (not as easy as psp.. but still just prepare sd card and run..)

what kind of emulators you want to use?


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## Foxi4 (Aug 8, 2014)

GBA rocks said:


> Xbox original is loud as hell and chug power (...) And I wanna reiterate xbox is unbearably loud for today standards.


Not that I wanna argue, but mine is as silent as it gets. Maybe you need a new fan, son?


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## GBA rocks (Aug 8, 2014)

What conditions are we talking? Small room, big room, complete silence?
All my consoles sit within 1m from my ears and I evaluate the noise in complete silence (game audio goes to headphones), maybe that's that.
I never tinkered with fans on both my fat ps2 and my crystal xbox yet the xbox is definitely louder. It holds a 750GB hdd, supposedly hotter than smaller ones with fewer platters.
One day I might look into liquid cooling or something.


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## Foxi4 (Aug 8, 2014)

GBA rocks said:


> What conditions are we talking? Small room, big room, complete silence?
> All my consoles sit within 1m from my ears and I evaluate the noise in complete silence (game audio goes to headphones), maybe that's that.
> I never tinkered with fans on both my fat ps2 and my crystal xbox yet the xbox is definitely louder. It holds a 750GB hdd, supposedly hotter than smaller ones with fewer platters. One day I might look into liquid cooling or something.


Mine's about 2.5 meters away from me by the telly and has an 8GB drive in it _(swapping for a bigger one soon)_ and is super quiet, but I guess it's different between systems. Maybe I have a higher tolerance for humming.


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## Count Duckula (Aug 8, 2014)

Foxi4 said:


> Not that I wanna argue, but mine is as silent as it gets. Maybe you need a new fan, son?


 
The fan speed in game is configured by a BIOS setting. If the unit is chipped/flashed and is near silent in-game it would likely be a good idea to dump/update fan speed/reflash the bios to keep the system cool.
I guess earlier models were just noisier overall also.


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## Foxi4 (Aug 8, 2014)

Count Duckula said:


> The fan speed in game is configured by a BIOS setting. If the unit is chipped/flashed and is near silent in-game it would likely be a good idea to dump/update fan speed/reflash the bios to keep the system cool.
> I guess earlier models were just noisier overall also.


Oh, don't worry - my temps are fine. UnleashX displays them on the dash, the unit is not overheating.


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## cvskid (Aug 8, 2014)

Original xbox over nintendo wii overall. The wii just has the convenience factor of being able to use sd cards and usb thumb/hard drives but if you figure out how to install a large hard drive inside the system and learn how to use FTP programs with the xbox then its fine.


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## M-Doggy (Aug 8, 2014)

emmanu888 said:


> Um why is this both in the Xbox thread and the Wii thread ?


 
Because it relates to both and I figured I would receive biased opinions in each thread depending on which section it was. So I wanted a general consensus among both threads.



GBA rocks said:


> Xbox original is loud as hell and chug power
> Wii is dead silent and sip power
> 
> Xbox original no first party wireless joypads (third party only)
> ...


 
Thank you. I am not worried about that noise and will be primarily modding for the purpose of emulating SNES, Genesis, and Arcade mainly. Everything else is a bonus.



migles said:


> The image quality on wii is very poor :/ if you are using an hd tv...
> 
> but its easy to softmod (not as easy as psp.. but still just prepare sd card and run..)
> 
> what kind of emulators you want to use?


 
I mainly want to play Genesis, SNES, Arcade and Neo Geo. Everything else is a bonus.


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## Foxi4 (Aug 8, 2014)

Don't triple-post. Reply to everyone in one post.
Don't make duplicate threads.
I'll merge the two threads and your triple-post now, but try not to do that again.


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## Psionic Roshambo (Aug 8, 2014)

Another point to consider is Networking. 

Wii has Wifi and I think you can get USB Ethernet adapters. 

Xbox is wired and I don't think there is any way to add Wifi at all.  

I would vote for Wii for most things, but I hear that XMBC on the Xbox is fantastic if you want media streaming. Not that media streaming on the Wii is bad as long as you stick to Xvid or Divx and try to avoid HD content your good to roll and it works really well.  

Emulation, is probably mixed I think the original Xbox has an advantage over the Wii because most of the emulators are ports from the PC (X86 and all) but I think the Wii is good enough for most emulation needs and the difference really breaks down to I think the Xbox enjoys better N64 emulation than the Wii does? (I haven't hacked my Xbox yet because it is a pain...) 

Then there is Halo 1 and 2 to consider... lol or Metroid Prime Trilogy... That's a tough call... lol


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## M-Doggy (Aug 8, 2014)

Foxi4 said:


> Don't triple-post. Reply to everyone in one post.
> Don't make duplicate threads.
> I'll merge the two threads and your triple-post now, but try not to do that again.


 
My apologies. First thread and posts.



Psionic Roshambo said:


> Another point to consider is Networking.
> 
> Wii has Wifi and I think you can get USB Ethernet adapters.
> 
> ...


 
Thank you. I mainly just want emulated retro games to run fantastically. I don't care much to use the modded system to play Xbox and Wii games as I already own hard copies of all the game I want.


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## Count Duckula (Aug 8, 2014)

Foxi4 said:


> Oh, don't worry - my temps are fine. UnleashX displays them on the dash, the unit is not overheating.


 
Ahh yep. The system isnt under much load when running the dash, XMBC has its own fan speed controls. Once you launch into a game though its up to the BIOS, and that's when its under a lot of load.
TBH one of mine is in an entertainment unit and only set to 40% fan speed, never had any problems with it after many years of use.

Is there something on unleashX that XBMC doesnt offer? It just looks so much nicer with cover art etc.
It does chug for a few seconds when i browse into my game dirs, but then again its a 2TB drive split into 1TB partitions, completely full with games


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## Lumstar (Aug 8, 2014)

First decide whether you're using an SDTV or HDTV. Wii should look better on SDTVs (240p support), yet worse on HDTVs (limited to 480p).

Xbox overall is friendlier to burnt games. It doesn't have anything near the drastic block attempt of later Wii models.


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## GBA rocks (Aug 8, 2014)

M-Doggy said:


> Thank you. I am not worried about that noise and will be primarily modding for the purpose of emulating SNES, Genesis, and Arcade mainly. Everything else is a bonus.


 

Honestly I think emulating on the xbox nowadays gets more credit than it deserves. It's decade old hardware after all.
It's mostly a "tradition" thing. For what it does, it's inefficient. You'd be better off building a PC with modern hardware.

Also, consider these retro titles are available as native wads (actually wrapped nintendo-developed emulator + rom) for the Wii:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)

Some people are tricked by the internet into buying an xbox to emulate Supermario64 at choppy framerates when they could play it on the Wii nearly perfectly with much less power consumption. That's what I mean by "tradition inertia" in the available information about the 1st-xbox scene.

I'd start with a Wii and explore all of its possibilities...especially GC, Wii and Virtual Console titles....only then consider to also invest in a xbox (with steeper learning curve and rarer internal PATA hdd). 

Also consider "Arcade collection" or "Retro collection" kinda retail games available for GC/Wii/Ps2/Ps3...leave homebrew emulation as a last resort...


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## Count Duckula (Aug 8, 2014)

The wii is a LOT easier to softmod, getting large HDDs to work is a LOT easier, it's quieter and you'll probably get more help with issues due to it being more recent. For the N64 platform specifically it also has better emulation for those games that got VC releases.

The xbox can do 720P which is nice for emulators, can be found dirt cheap even compared to wiis (my last one cost me $20 with 3 controllers and it's chipped), and is a better media player (both are really only good for SD playback though). You can get a SATA HDD to run with the right adaptor (I've got a 2TB hdd in one of mine), but its far from quick and easy.

There's not a huge amount of difference between emulators on the systems other than superior n64 emulation through VC. N64 is one platform where homebrew emulation has never been all that polished, even on a powerful PC.
For 8/16 bit era games you're pretty much always better off with a homebrew emulator as the accuracy is generally just as good and you get a lot more features like filters etc.

I wouldn't consider either of them 'fantastic' host platforms for retro emulation though.

The xbox is not really that much weaker than a wii, 733mhz p3(with less cache than normal) and 64mb shared RAM in xbox vs ~730mhz powerpc and 64MB system/24+3MB gfx RAM in wii. The wii does have some advantage in newer architectures (higher bandwidth RAM etc), but as others have said the xbox emulators do benefit somewhat from being direct x86 ports of PC emulators compiled with the official XDK (xbox sdk).

A PC would be far far better in terms of how emulated games look (high quality upscaling/filtering etc) and run (accuracy and full FPS/no frameskip), as well as offering emulators for more platforms, but as you didnt list it I'm guessing it's not an option.
Even an old laptop connected to a TV and a wireless 360 pad would be a much better option.


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## FAST6191 (Aug 8, 2014)

GBA rocks said:


> Honestly I think emulating on the xbox nowadays gets more credit than it deserves. It's decade old hardware after all.
> It's mostly a "tradition" thing. For what it does, it's inefficient. You'd be better off building a PC with modern hardware.
> 
> Also, consider these retro titles are available as native wads (actually wrapped nintendo-developed emulator + rom) for the Wii:
> ...



Suffered a large power bill lately or something? My 1.6 xbox is rated at 1.2A ( http://www.sdenergysmart.com/Rotator-videogame.aspx says 172W in use), granted compared to the Wii's 0.2A (apparently 40W effective, http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_gameconsole.htm ) it does not quite rate.

Equally "decade old hardware"... because the overclocked GC powerpc chip is so very new?

As for what goes... I would vote neither. You can probably do better with a raspberry pi or something similar, or indeed an old PC. It certainly trounces both for media playback. If you like wireless then maybe the Wii, however ethernet over powerline is not exactly expensive these days, granted the only wireless I like are the times I make a somewhat illegal high power transmission type situation. Ease of hacking.... nothing in it for me (both are very much on the trivial end of the scale) until you want to do hard drives. 

If I had one I would probably not get the other, depending upon my feelings about the N64 (as in not wanting it) I would say the xbox might still have the edge in emulation when it comes to pure polish and extra features. That said you can play all the same games on the Wii with the features most care about.

As for homebrew emulation as a last resort... that was classic. Thanks for the giggle.

Both are wiped away by modern raspberry pi, a similarly priced old PC, android and all the rest.


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## GBA rocks (Aug 9, 2014)

With that last sentence you basically said what I meant.
Both xbox and wii are useless as bought-on-purpose emulating machines, compared to
modern low power SFF or high end options.
Should be bought for other reasons with emulation being a bonus.
My point is "at least" the wii has VC, Wii-GC exclusives (with all due respect to xbox exclusives..), more silent operation, small footprint and plethora of first party gamepad options, wired and wireless.

And yes I wouldn't resort to emulating something that's available in a retail package or first party emulation (call me when Wii64 performs as fast as Nintendo's own n64 VC emulator), not sure how that's giggle worthy. In b4 savestates, graphical effects, filters and the like. Well I'm ok with the barebone original. Wii VC + CRT tv and it's Christmas morning for me. 

I like my xbox for other kind of games (xbox and xbox+pc exclusives of the era), I consider those "9999999 games emulator with cool GUI" more of a nostalgia encyclopedia to fire up when friends are
over than for actual gaming.


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## Foxi4 (Aug 23, 2014)

GBA rocks said:


> _*Snip!*_


A little addition to my previous post about my Xbox being pretty quiet - I've fiddled around some more with UnleashX and it turns out that my fan was set to 1.0 speed - I've increased it to 2.0 since I wanted to cut down the temperature a little and now the system is pretty audible. Might fool around with a new fan or use some grease on the motor, that'll probably make it quieter.


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## VashTS (Aug 23, 2014)

I had both simultaneously. never touched the xbox, mainly only used wii. the hd video is pointless, wii 480p is not that bad, i mainly use my wii to watch movies. 

better suggestion - CFW PS3


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## SlCKB0Y (Sep 3, 2014)

FAST6191 said:


> Both are wiped away by modern raspberry pi, a similarly priced old PC, android and all the rest.



Errr no. In terms of ease of setup, configuration and use as well as controllers, emulator speed and quality and available support the wii absolutely stomps the pi in every area. 

The only reason anyone remotely serious about emulation would even consider the pi would be power consumption and just the self satisfaction from the more DIY approach.

I can't stress this enough....

Oh and can the pi play media well? Sure, it plays the media well, but it absolutely chokes when using xbmc/plex with more than about 50 titles....what I would call unacceptable slow.

Either we have way different standards for these things or I'm not sure where you're getting your info about the pi from.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 3, 2014)

My info on the pi... the several I have running in various capacities both for personal use and for clients.

Ease of setup, in some ways maybe. All are at the level of "follow this list of instructions" (in the pi's case things like berryboot making it even easier) and if you are going to call the level of support the pi gets behind the Wii or xbox... yeah.

Can't say I have tried plex but I fear you must have had an odd setup with XBMC -- most setups I have there usually extensive libraries, SMB shares, USB (granted I tend not to do anything on the internal SD cards)... way into the hundreds of files (terabytes at 700/1400 meg file sizes) and works fine in file browser and library capacities. Did you have everything in one directory/no subdirectories or something?

My experiences with emulation. The Wii, the xbox and the pi do wonderfully for 16 bit and older (maybe save for some exceptions in more obscure consoles) and everything after that has some good things but generally is a bit hazy. Control wise we have the wired 360 pad available on the pi, probably also wii stuff if I jam a bluetooth in there but when wired 360 pads exist... actually I might have to try something else out for the dpad. I will confess I have not really looked into mame (basically because I have not taken mame/mess beyond "I know what it is" level on anything really) and I hear the Wii has something decent there, though by the looks of things the others are no slouch either.

On the (not much) money no object front I am not sure what I would pick, save perhaps the H264 abilities of the pi, and would probably not pick one of the others if the person needing it had one of the others and the means to hack it. All that said I think you seriously underestimate the current abilities of the pi.


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## the_randomizer (Sep 3, 2014)

Plain and simple, the Wii offers spot on 8 and 16-bit console emulation without a hitch, esp. with RetroArch Wii, for PSX and N64 emulation, it's a mixed bag and ultimately disappointing due to poor optimization, that and a lack of sufficient power. The emulators for N64 and PSX are outdated and can only be improved so much, other devices like the Raspberry Pi will do a much better job for those.


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