Xbox Original vs Wii for Softmodding

[GBA rocks]

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...

 

[Count Duckula]

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.

 

[FAST6191]

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...

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.

 

[GBA rocks]

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.

 

[Foxi4]

*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.

 

[VashTS]

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

 

[SlCKB0Y]

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.

 

[FAST6191]

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.

 

[the_randomizer]

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.