Hacking Xbox 360 Emulator?

[Deleted User]

Since the Xbox One has essentially XB360 virtual console. I was wondering if anyone's ever reverse engineered it to enable playing any 360 disc and not just those added to the store?

 

[tech3475]

I doubt we’ll see anything before the Xbox OS is hacked.

Assuming it’s just a wrapper/emulator of course and not a recompile (then it will be impossible with maybe few exceptions e.g. emulated games).

 

[lucks]

Afaik it does not run xbox 360 executables, so it is not a virtual console like nintendo vc.

They are recompiled for xone

 

[Deleted User]

Since the Xbox One has essentially XB360 virtual console. I was wondering if anyone's ever reverse engineered it to enable playing any 360 disc and not just those added to the store?

The emulator is packed into each back-compat game. Not gonna obtain one without decryption of them.

 

[RyanTheArchivist]

Since the Xbox One has essentially XB360 virtual console. I was wondering if anyone's ever reverse engineered it to enable playing any 360 disc and not just those added to the store?

the xbox one backwards combat works like game cube did on wii and wii did on wiiu its not being emulated and its running on the actual hardware the reason they can do this is because the hardware from each gen of xbox is very similar

 

[DinohScene]

the xbox one backwards combat works like game cube did on wii and wii did on wiiu its not being emulated and its running on the actual hardware the reason they can do this is because the hardware from each gen of xbox is very similar

Xbox is x86, 360 is PPC and Xbone is x86_64.
PPC and x86 are two completely architectures.

There's no 360 emu in the Xbone, nor does it run on 360 hardware.

Games are individually compiled to run on Xbone.
Hence the download.

 

[Deleted User]

Xbox is x86, 360 is PPC and Xbone is x86_64.
PPC and x86 are two completely architectures.

There's no 360 emu in the Xbone, nor does it run on 360 hardware.

Games are individually compiled to run on Xbone.
Hence the download.

The emulator is actually packed with each game. There's also some management for catching errors from the emulator within the main operating system (SRA).

 

[Deleted User]

I doubt we’ll see anything before the Xbox OS is hacked.

Assuming it’s just a wrapper/emulator of course and not a recompile (then it will be impossible with maybe few exceptions e.g. emulated games).

Xbox OS is a custom version of Windows 10

And yea, they have emulators compiled with the games, like SNES on Wii U. Basically I'm asking for those emulators to be reverse engineered to make a sideloadable UWP app which can boot from disc like PS1 emulators on PC let you do. Or some sort of injection tool, though the latter might be detect and banable and there's the matter of acquiring ISOs, whereas a UWP emulator running in dev mode shouldn't breach anything.

Reason I care is I'm planning on buying an Xbox One S after making the mistake of selling my OG XB1 last year, and theres a few niche 360 games that I've previously played/discovered after selling my 360 that are unlikely to be added, and I don't have the space for a console dedicated to a couple of games that the Xbox One is neglecting.

I do hear that there is a PC emulator making leaps, maybe if there's some way for me to read 360 discs on my computer that's another option.

 

[tech3475]

Xbox OS is a custom version of Windows 10

And yea, they have emulators compiled with the games, like SNES on Wii U. Basically I'm asking for those emulators to be reverse engineered to make a sideloadable UWP app which can boot from disc like PS1 emulators on PC let you do. Or some sort of injection tool, though the latter might be detect and banable and there's the matter of acquiring ISOs, whereas a UWP emulator running in dev mode shouldn't breach anything.

Reason I care is I'm planning on buying an Xbox One S after making the mistake of selling my OG XB1 last year, and theres a few niche 360 games that I've previously played/discovered after selling my 360 that are unlikely to be added, and I don't have the space for a console dedicated to a couple of games that the Xbox One is neglecting.

I do hear that there is a PC emulator making leaps, maybe if there's some way for me to read 360 discs on my computer that's another option.

Unless they've changed it, Xbox OS last I heard consists of a hypervisor and separate VMs for games/apps.

The Xbox One also doesn't read from the disc but downloads the entire game and uses the disc for DRM.

Dev mode last I heard has restrictions which may make what you want to do difficult if not impossible e.g. RAM restrictions, SDK restrictions, etc. Assuming that it's possible to decompile the app in the first place (never looked into this). I'm sure we would have seen mass piracy by now if this was simple enough.

This is why I said it's unlikely we'll see any injects (if possible at all) until the OS is hacked.

It's also unlikely that you'll see a PC emulator read games directly due to the nature of the disc (XGD), at least not with a normal PC drive. The PC emulator though has made progress, Halo 3 is playable but with lots of graphical glitches.

 

[Deleted User]

Unless they've changed it, Xbox OS last I heard consists of a hypervisor and separate VMs for games/apps.

The Xbox One also doesn't read from the disc but downloads the entire game and uses the disc for DRM.

If the Xbox One can check a disc for DRM then it should theoretically be able to check the same disc for data to stream if told. I don't know anything about coding but presumably a custom emulator could probably be programmed to read off the disc and only needs to borrow Microsoft's emulator code for the processing and rendering part.

Perhaps instead of decrypting a compiled game to reverse engineer the BC code, the 'emulator' could be programmed to select and tell the console to start up a legally installed BC game to get into 360 mode but load whatever disc is inserted instead of the BC game. Like how N64 passport loads an out of region game by showing the N64 the lockout chip of an in region game plugged into the back or how Freeloader and Swap Magic work by acting like a normal disc then running code to swap it out for the desired disc.

 

[tech3475]

If the Xbox One can check a disc for DRM then it should theoretically be able to check the same disc for data to stream if told. I don't know anything about coding but presumably a custom emulator could probably be programmed to read off the disc and only needs to borrow Microsoft's emulator code for the processing and rendering part.

Perhaps instead of decrypting a compiled game to reverse engineer the BC code, the 'emulator' could be programmed to select and tell the console to start up a legally installed BC game to get into 360 mode but load whatever disc is inserted instead of the BC game. Like how N64 passport loads an out of region game by showing the N64 the lockout chip of an in region game plugged into the back or how Freeloader and Swap Magic work by acting like a normal disc then running code to swap it out for the desired disc.

TBH, I think you are going to be better off just buying an Xbox 360 and struggling for room.

AFAIK there isn't even a way to extract the contents of an Xbone game container (HDD yes, but only as a blob and not the individual contents).

 

[lucks]

Well, it seems that according to microsoft the xone 360 games use an "xbox OS emulator with no peripherals support".

So, this means there s an half working emulator with custom config/fixes backed into each game, and you cannot boot a game as is because it will probably requires patches or a config to work properly.

Same as ps4 classics i think

 

[Deleted User]

Perhaps I shouldn't be asking anything of the hacking scene while they have their own code to worry about.

 

[Pickle_Rick]

It is an emulator. Some things are pre-translated and some things use JIT. You probably could load your own games in but they wouldn't run full speed. (Unless they were simple games.) Also, the emulator doesn't support XNA. (Which is what all 360 "indies" used.)

But fundamentally, Xbox 360 back-compat works on the principle of an emulation layer. There is some hardware assistance and - yes - some 'secret sauce' (Microsoft didn't want to be drawn on how the emulator supports Xbox 360's VMX128 vector units, for example), but the team is now at the point now where everything an Xbox 360 can do, its emulator can mirror in software. And that's impressive - by the end of the 360 era, developers had leeway to bypass the DirectX API and address the GPU more directly, potentially making transcompilation of code more challenging. Stillwell confirms that this isn't a problem for the emulation layer and in fact, the only thing that isn't supported is XNA.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...x-one-x-back-compat-how-does-it-actually-work

 

[JiveTheTurkey]

Perhaps I shouldn't be asking anything of the hacking scene while they have their own code to worry about.

Well I think since it isn't derogatory it shouldn't be a issue asking.