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A modified PlayStation 5 has gained another unusual feature. XPSemu has been created, a port of the xemu emulator for the original Xbox that runs directly as an app on a jailbroken PS5. The first public Alpha can already run titles including Halo 2, Forza Motorsport, Fable: The Lost Chapters and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
Halo 2 runs at up to 60 fps
XPSemu is not a simple wrapper. The emulator uses QEMU to emulate the original Xbox CPU, Vulkan for graphics rendering and runs as a native PS5 app. The project also has its own Xbox-style interface, per-game settings and the ability to scale resolution up to 4×. In initial tests Halo 2 hits 30 fps by default, and with a 60 fps patch it can run at around 36 to 50 fps during gameplay and up to 60 fps in lighter scenes. Forza Motorsport manages roughly 15 to 21 fps during races, while Fable: The Lost Chapters is usually 22 to 30 fps, though performance drops in more demanding scenes. Interestingly, the main bottleneck is not the PS5 GPU but the CPU. The developer says the emulated Xbox CPU thread can use 85 to 97 per cent of the PS5's allotted CPU time, while the graphics chip often remains largely underutilised.
Xbox 360 and Windows are on the way too
The experiments don't stop there. A separate project has already demonstrated early emulation of the Xbox 360 on PS5, although there is no public build yet or a list of compatible games. The PS5 Proton project is being developed in parallel and aims to allow Windows games and applications to run directly on a modified console. For now, however, both projects are at a much earlier stage than XPSemu. It should also be emphasised that this does not work on a stock PS5. XPSemu requires a jailbreak, appropriate homebrew software, and your own system files and copies of games from the original Xbox.
So for now it's primarily an interesting demonstration of what the homebrew community can do, rather than a new PlayStation feature available to every user.
Sources: GitHub @ZiZc3, VideoCardz
