XBox Emulator?

[Oyeve]

Being that the XBox is basically a PC running WinXP shoudnt it be like super easy for someone to make an EMU for PCs? And wouldnt it then be silly to spend hundreds of dollars getting an Xbox if an EMU comes out? Its standard DVD and CDrom so I dont imagine it would be that difficult. LMK what you guys think.

 

[codehack2]

<< Being that the XBox is basically a PC running WinXP shoudnt it be like super easy for someone to make an EMU for PCs? And wouldnt it then be silly to spend hundreds of dollars getting an Xbox if an EMU comes out? Its standard DVD and CDrom so I dont imagine it would be that difficult. LMK what you guys think. >>



The OS on the Xbox is a little more complex than that.. Keep in mind, we are only talking optimised kernel here with embedded DX. I'm guessing that you get a small modified subset of the win32 environment. It also seems as though MS has done a compitent job on incrypting Xbox disks and from the looks of it may even be using a unique filesystem. All that in mind, the Xbox may get an emulator, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I remember 2 years ago when the dreamcast came out, everyone was pumped because the system ran a version of Windows CE and were sure that an emulator would imediately appear. As of my knowledge, I believe that this is yet to happen.

CH2

 

[ikar0s]

You also have to remember that emulating something at full speed requires your system hardware to be 2x-3x as powerful as the hardware you are emulating.

Considering the fact that the XBox has a 733MHz P3 and a high-end GF3, running on an optimized subsystem, even IF someone made an emulator, it would be quite some time before we had hardware powerful enough to run XBox games at full speed (at least a year from now).

 

[Operandi]

You also have to remember that emulating something at full speed requires your system hardware to be 2x-3x as powerful as the hardware you are emulating.

True, but we already have the hardware, CPU x86, graphics Direct X. The only piece of hardware that would cause problems is the custom graphics. It?s a slightly faster version of the GF3 so anything less that would prolly be too slow. Everything else hardware wise shouldnt cause much of a problem. 6-12 months from now and the PC should easily have the hardware to emulate the Xbox. More likely the bigger problem would be software, modified OS or maybe protected media.

 

[GL]

I'd say it's inevitable that an emulator will appear. To my knowledge the dreamcast only use WinCE in some titles - the vast majority used Sega's own OS. But that aside, just looking at how fast MS was able to bring the Xbox to market indicates that it is a very close cousin to the PC and emulation should be possible and plausible even if it is a bit difficult. I'd say wait a year or two though before an emulator hits.

 

[Sugadaddy]

I'm sure there'll be one, but not before at least a year. (probably more)


It's not just a question of having the hardware. Yes, our current CPUs are faster, and video cards are almost as fast, but keep in mind you're running windows... Xbox has its way of managing its hardware, and it's all optimized JUST for gaming. An emulator would have to recreate that, and run on top of windows, so it would be much slower and need much better hardware than Xbox.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

<< It's not just a question of having the hardware. Yes, our current CPUs are faster, and video cards are almost as fast, but keep in mind you're running windows... xbox has its way of managing its hardware, and it's all optimized JUST for gaming. An emulator would have to recreate that, and run on top of windows, so it would be much slower and need much better hardware than xbox. >>

ah kemosabe, lets think outside the box...and do it backwards! run the xbox o/s on the computer. i know a direct port wouldnt work, but hey , maybe someone could figure that out.

 

[BeauJangles]

I think we shall see an emulator for it in the next 6 months.. knowing MS they forgot some big part of their security and it will get exploited.

 

[codehack2]

<< knowing MS they forgot some big part of their security and it will get exploited. >>



MS would beg to differ, they went internal & got the best of the security best.. They pulled in the IIS (Internet Information Server) and Exchange teams for this a colabrative effort on this one.

CH2