Let it be abundantly clear: dev mode is not a workaround. It was the original way to do this. The "workaround" was people uploading emulators to the retail store and violating ToS.
Ok boomer , also I had age of empires 2 working on dos box pure / windows 98 before Alex on xbox , Alex the noob couldn't get the music to work and never showed it 😂
Thank you, the video kinda framed it as if microsoft removed the main access to emulation. Retail was never officially supported, dev mode has been the way from the start.
FYI, when it comes to playing PS2, Gamecube, and Wii, the standalone emulators are WAY better than the Retroarch cores. The Retroarch cores for PCSX2 and Dolphin are super outdated. XBSX2.0, the PS2 emulator, and Standalone Dolphin can run most games I've tried at full speed with very minimal issues. And a lot of times if there is an issue, at least with a PS2 game, there's settings to fix it. For Dolphin, usually changing the shader settings can fix stuttering and stuff. If absolutely needed, you can even just set it to Skip Draw to get rid of most stuttering all together, but you might get some pop in, since it's not waiting for shader stuff to cache, it's just throwing you right in, then drawing those things as they happen on the fly. As for the controller. I recommend getting a Wingman Xb2. It looks like a USB stick. You plug it into your console, and bam, you can connect different controllers to it. I use a PS4 controller to emulate PS1 and PS2 games on my Xbox, and an 8bitdo SN30 Pro for older consoles. This issue with N64, is down to the fact that the N64 cores don't natively work with Direct X, so it's using Angle to run Open GL, and Angle is broken on newer versions of the cores. So updating them, makes them stop working. You should be able to go into core settings and tell some specific cores not to update, which will allow you to update the rest of your cores without accidentally updating the N64 cores. (I'd also recommend not updating the Saturn cores for the same reason). As for DS. Yeah, the touch screen is a hard thing to get around. But you CAN set a cursor to the right stick, and a button to act as touching the screen. So as long as it's not a game with a LOT of touch screen stuff going on, you can get away with it. Pokemon for example would work fine. For Xenia, you're going to get stuttering in most games, no matter what, for a while. The issue here, is that 360 games need to cache shaders. With Dolphin, there's a lot of pre-cached shaders built in, that tend to be re-used in a lot of games. So it doesn't have as much shader cache stuttering. But Xenia, doesn't do that. Most 360 games use their own shaders, and there's no built in "commonly used" shaders to draw from. So every time you come across something new in a 360 game, whether that be different lighting, light effects, special effects, models, textures, etc, etc, etc, the emulator has to save the shaders to a cache file. The thing is, once that shader's saved, it's saved. It doesn't need to be re-saved to the cache. So the next time you come across that same thing in-game, it won't have to save it again, and won't stutter to do so. The shaders also stay saved if you quit the game and load it up again later. So the more you play a 360 game on Xenia, the less the game will stutter. I had GTAV on Xenia, for example, running at full speed with no stuttering at all. It ran nearly identical to how it ran on an actual 360. But it took me about an hour of using a noclip mod and flying through the city to get all the shaders for it cached. Forza Horizon also uses a lot of the same shaders over the course of the whole game, so shader cache stuttering doesn't last incredibly long on it. Once the caching is done, Xenia tends to run at close to, or actual full speed. At least on the games it actually runs. Mind you, this is an issue with XENIA, not specifically the Xenia Xbox port. Xenia, even on PC, is still very much a WIP, and isn't remotely as functional as something like PCSX2 or Dolphin (or even RPCS3, which we don't have on Xbox). So don't go into Xenia expecting to play every 360 game ever. ---- Dev also doesn't really bring much in the way of extra "hassles" compared to retail emulation to be honest. Once the apps themselves are installed, the apps themselves work exactly the same as they did on retail. The biggest issue is that most of the time, FTP is busted and won't let you access internal local folders. So your best bet is to use an external storage of some kind to store your games, as well as the localstate folders for the main emulators. Then you'll almost never need to access the internal local folders anyway. And when you wanna copy things to the external storage, FTP still works fine for that, or you could just unplug it and plug it into your PC.
Digital Foundry/Eurogamer "Microsoft may have done its best to lock down Xbox Series consoles from running emulators" That's downright slander, they only blocked the Retail Mode workaround.
probably at 30fps with the 3605 ea version with some visual fix mods and fps++ mod, yet we don't talk about this hush-hush stuff or certain ninjas will give you a visit.
I’ve been using my Series S (and One before that) exclusively in Dev Mode for the better part of 3 years and it’s been amazing, in no small part to the amazing work of the devs (particularly SirMangler). Newer games I’ll tend to play on the PS5 because I like the controller ALOT more but the Xbox has very quickly shown that it’s one of the best values for money out there.
I have also used Dev Mode for years - makes one wonder what the fuck did Ollie smoke when he said Microsoft "tried its best" to shutdown emulation on XBSX|S. They closed the Retail Mode workaround, nothing more.
It is truly a gimmick. Most games ignore its special features while it eats battery like crazy. I do both my emulation and premium gaming on a single machine, the XBSX, for this very reason.
@@OneLastScholar Dualsense makes a huge difference for immersion when implemented. Most games ignore it? Most current gen games take advantage of at least some of its features. It's fine for an individual to not care for the controller but to call it a gimmick is just ignorant.
Dolphin has a stand alone UWP app that improves performance on Series consoles especially in titles like Twilight Princess it’s basically unplayable in Retroarch once you reach the first swamp.
All you had to do was have an ini file containing Hyrule field speed hack based in the region you got your ROM from, and add to saves/user/game settings, And the game works perfectly and I even beat the game after patching the game with this hack on xbox
Wait, why my comment got cut in half, I was explaining to you how to patch the game with a hack that fix performance issues and the game fixes to 30 fps
I disagree with having it set up as a standalone console. Yes it’s kind of a pain to set it up initially, but once it’s going you literally open one app to get in or out of dev mode and you’re golden. Maybe for the roommates they might need a 5 min tutorial if they wanna jump on it but it’s really not that hard lol
@@theteddychannel8529 seriously. Who is actually running 11TB on a console. More than likely they’re also slow drives bottlenecking the system and is not representative of the average user putting their games on a decent usb drive.
Retroarch’s dolphin core are very outdated. If you get the proper Dolphin MMJ standalone emulator, it works really well. So it’s not an Xbox Serie S problem, it’s an outdated emulator problem.
@@awesomereviews1561 DUDE I AM PLAYING THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW AND IT IS AS I DESCRIBED IT. I HAVE THE LATEST VERSION INSTALLED. Go do the things I mentioned. You cannot.go ahead try it before you call me a liar
@@jimmelton5846 I have tried that too, the settings reset after you close the emulator or if you choose another controller profile. The file you imported is there but the emulator ignores it after it works only once. Go try it bro. It is extremely undercooked.
The complaints about not being able to run emulators in retail mode don’t make sense to me. Doing so was always against the terms of service. So them eventually blocking it shouldn’t be a surprise, especially since their relationships with game publishers are very important to them.
Ok course it makes sense. One day you can emulate in retail. The next day you can't. And because of Microsoft's DRM in system setup there's no offline workaround.
@@pixeljauntvr7774 One day you can emulate in retail against the rules, the next day they get around to enforcing the rules. Someone discovered a way around Microsoft's rules, and it eventually got too prominent (too many publishers complaining likely) and they close the loophole. I don't find that to be a confusing state of affairs.
There's no way that using dev mode isn't some sort of TOS violation in and of itself. It's just one Microsoft can't easily enforce because of how that mode is intended to work. Not to mention this whole appealing to TOS bandwagon people seem to be jumping on here is farcical on the face of it. A big part of emulation has always involved "breaking TOS" and jailbreaking consoles, to the point where the go to handheld emulator for _years_ was the Sony PSP. That people are suddenly so concerned with the TOS of some company that has no genuine interest in games preservation to begin with when it comes to emulation, is the real confusing state of affairs. It completely makes sense that they'd "ban" it, but this attitude that what we're doing currently is somehow... intended? No. Just no.
The dev mode isnt a work around it is the tried and true original way of using emulation since xbox one. Dev mode emulation damn sure isnt new. $20 to play almost any title you want is a pretty great deal.
I would disagree with the notion the main intended ish way of using emulators was retail mode. THAT was the workaround, and THAT was the one that got shut down, the Dev Mode way is not the backup, it's the intended way.
Technically speaking, Dev isn't the "intended" way either. Dev mode is specifically for people developing apps, to use as a way to test their apps before uploading them to the store. Dev mode emulation just happens to be a thing we can do. Both retail and dev emulation is something that just, could be done. Not intended either way. But yeah, Retail was definitely something we weren't *supposed* to do. MS just wasn't cracking down on it too hard. They'd remove the apps, and ban the dev account. But they'd never console ban anyone for doing it, or even fully block them, so someone could just re-upload them immediately after. Until recently, anyway. When MS decided to block them outright so even if you did manage to download one, it won't open.
the devs and mods on xbox emulation hub server once said: "retroarch should only be used for 5th gen and below, anything beyond that should be ran on standalone emulators" (that includes ppsspp, xbsx2.0, dolphin, flycast and ofc xenia which isn't even available on RA) And issues u encoutered with xenia are related to shader stutter which is an issue with the emulator itself and the only way to solve it is just stand still and let xenia cache all the necessary shaders
@@jimmelton5846 yes that is true, however the ppsspp RA core has less customization and some visual glitches in a minority of games, don't know about flycast however as I rarely use it
@the mighty lord of goblins not sure about less customisation, I'm pretty sure the options are identical. I use flycast and ppsspp cores and standalone. PS2 and Gamecube emulation I agree wholeheartedly however.
PPSSPP is 1:1. Performance on Retroarch and standalone is the same. Same goes for Flycast. I dunno about settings-wise, but there's also the fact that you have Retroarch settings too, as opposed to just the emulator settings to consider. Things like audio latency settings are only in RA, and not the standalones. There's also shaders (kinda jank with Flycast, but work great on PPSSPP in Retroarch), screen settings to change the actual size of the image (useful for if you want image borders), more hotkeys and things too. But definitely use standalones for PS2, Dolphin, and obviously Xenia. For PPSSPP and Flycast, it's mostly a preference thing.
Finding a native version of Dolphin should help out the framerate issues. Retroarch has its own baggage and overhead and it can drag emulation performance down. Breaking out of Retroarch and running something a little more native should provide a performance boost, if something like that is available.
It doesn't help that he even USED the Retroarch core for Dolphin. We have a perfectly good standalone Dolphin emulator on Xbox, that runs WAY better than the Retroarch core.
Overall a bad attitude from the guys at DF, They should be in awe they can play emulators at all on a modern unhacked console but they come offas spoiled children complaining about nothing. Most emulators up to Dreamcast run great, N64 has never had good emulation on anything. A lot of Ps2/wii games run great also. Retail mode was always an exploit and should not have been used.
Just an FYI: If you got any PC from the last few years you can almost certainly run GameCube/PS2 emulation pretty flawlessly even with the built-in GPU. DC/PS1 and lower will 100% work flawlessly. The emulators these days are just really good. EDIT: Again, don't run anything higher than DC on Retroarch. Gamecube and PS2 cores are very out of date and run way better in standalone.
Gamecube, Wii (U) and PSP have by far the best emulators. Your experience with PS2 emulation may vary, out of the 5 or 6 titles I wanted to replay only two one of them ran decently, and even then the Gamecube versions ran way better. I had to run the games in 720p/1080p at most when I can play Mario Kart 8 in 4k.
@@LutraLovegood PCSX2 have been improved greatly the last year or two tho. Just be sure to download the nightly build because I don't think the stable ones have all the improvements yet.
@Andre Thompson if you have that luxury then great, saves kids (and adults) potentially leaving dev mode without safe exit and deleting sideloaded apps :)
I personally don't mind all the necessary work to set retroarch and xbsx2 up, the experience you get after doing that rewards you with a pretty average solid experience
With all due respect, Oliver seems to have a less serious attitude about cleaning his devices. His Steam Deck that he shows in his uploads looked filthy.
Anyone who is familiar with the wacky world of handheld emulation systems, knows that the Nemesis is usually God Of War : Ghost of Sparta for the Sony PSP lol
Dev mode was always THE way to emulate, i don't know why people ever thought that doing this in retail mode and therefore violating TOS was ever a good idea.
If you're going to buy a second system to handle emulation I don't see why you wouldn't just buy a small APU box. I'm sure it'll be at least a little bit more expensive but it'll have zero software restrictions, won't be subject to Microsoft randomly deciding they don't like emulation or changing Dev account ToS, and generally take up a whole lot less room which seems important for something that is likely to be a secondary system.
What I don't get, is why do that anyway? Swapping in and out of dev mode takes about a minute. Two minutes at most. The very first time you boot into Dev, it takes a bit longer, but after that, it takes a minute or so to swap. Most GAMES make you wait that long anyway, through company logos and stuff. If you're too impatient to wait a single minute to swap to dev mode, how are you gonna deal with waiting in games for logos, or cutscenes, or something. Especially older games where a lot of that wasn't skippable... Unless you're planning on swapping between emulated games and retail games every couple of minutes, I really don't see the swap time to be a big deal. Swap to dev, play emulated games for a while, then swap to retail when you're done or wanna play retail games. Play those for a while, then swap back when it's time to emulate again.
@@TXFDA yeah I don't totally get it either. I guess maybe so you don't have to teach your kids how to do it or something but I think they'd have to be pretty young to struggle with the concept. To me the whole thing sounds like something that is cooler in concept than in practice.
@@PM-xc8oo I mean, if they're able to figure out how to USE the emulators, they should be able to figure out how to open an app to swap between retail and dev. Swapping back to retail is just a matter of opening the Safe-Exit app and it auto-swaps back over. Retail to Dev is just: Open an app, click swap, and it swaps over.
Have you got a video for Xbox series X running emulators or just the Series S? I would love to see one for Series X to see how much better the performance is with the emulators.
I still feel its more cost effective to get a mini pc and then run launchbox on it and have all emulators in one place and all roms compiled neatly and probably better performance to
Iv gotta say, love my series s! It’s amazing in dev mode, I can play whatever emulator I want up till the the late 2000s. U can even go online through emulation too! The Xbox series is seriously the best console to play retro games and is more backwards compatible with psp, ps1/2 than Sony has ever been. ! U can upscale and even add texture packs and translations. Even mods on old games are out there. Anyone thinking of getting one, I got mine for 150pounds and then like another 20. So for 170 pounds u get access to not only Xbox and game pass but cloud gaming and thousands and thousands of retro games. Only issue is the storage however if u don’t play a lot of series games then u can just use a basic usb storage drive!
5:05 I might be wrong, but i think this has to do with Mupen64 cores defaulting to OpenGL or Vulkan rendering after update, which is unavailable on the UWP due to XSX and XSS only supporting DX11/DX12 render. It can be fixed through editing the config files IIRC.
@@steffan9415That guy said some incredibly dumb stuff, I'm surprised you even responded to them. Starting with "imagine" just proves they ain't worth talking to 😂
Very unpleasant to me tho, this video is lazy and incomplete, the information is outdated and does a disservice to what the console is capable of, hes literally using a verison of the dolphin emulator that is years old.
It's not really necessary. Emulation is heavily CPU-based. Both the S and X have nearly identical CPUs. So emulation is almost exactly the same on both consoles. That's why most of the time, we recommend buying a Series S if emulation is a major point for why you want an Xbox. A series X is better for actual retail Xbox games, but for emulation, they both work the same. So if you care more about emulation, than normal Xbox games, a Series S is great. But get an X if you care about retail games, since retail games tend to run better, have One X enhancements, and can run at 4k.
Microsoft didnt "make it a pain." Its very clear that other companies demanded that Microsoft patch out retail mode emulation in order to avoid legal trouble. If it was up to them we'd probably still have retail mode emulation.
I agree honestly. We had emulation on retail for years, and at most, Microsoft would remove the apps from the store, and ban the dev account that uploaded them. They never tried to block emulators outright, nor did they attempt to console ban the person uploading them (despite the fact that they easily could have). They did just enough to uphold the Terms of Service that says you can't upload emulators to the store, but left enough wiggle room for someone to just get a new dev account and reupload them. They only just started blocking the apps fully. I don't really think it's Nintendo specifically causing a fuss, like a lot of people think. But I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo (and even Sony) was at least part of why MS finally got serious about blocking the emulators.
I find Oliver's voice very tough to understand on bigger speakers. It's very bassy and lacks clearness. On smartphone speakers it's alright. I've been noticing this for a long time now and I just wanted to give this feedback, maybe you can look into it and do some further equalising to the voice track in the future. Maybe it's the mixing environment. That being said I thoroughly enjoy all of DFs videos which is why I take the time to write this
It was also really weird how you were able to get emulators in regular Xbox mode, it wasn't something you could just download from the Xbox store or something.
If you have a decent android phone you can just plug it into your tv and get a much better experience. If not you can buy much stronger portable emulators for the same price. Just need a decent controller. the kingkongpro2 by Gulikit has been amazing for me. It has holosense triggers and joysticks while feeling premium and with amazing battery life for 70 USD. If you also want it for Xbox games then a Series S can be worth it.
if you are spending the extra cash on a 2nd console just for dev mode, you might as well just buy a used optiplex and ram a GTX 1050 or RX 580 in there. not only will it be cheaper, but you will be able to use all the modern emulators which rely on Vulkan. you also won't be restricted to which input devices you can use.
Friendly reminder that you can put a texture pack that replace the PS2 textures with the hd ones I was talking about re4 (sorry i forgot to mention it lol
Most people know the bare minumum when it comes to emulation. If you want in depth stuff on emulation ETA Prime, Taki Udon, The Phawx, and Retro Game Corps are your go to sources
They actually both emulate about the same. The Series S, and Series X have nearly identical CPUs, which is what emulation mostly relies on. So you get pretty much the exact same emulation experience on either console.
Could you elaborate on this? The Xenia config mentions nothing in relation to "allow illegal texture format decoding", closest thing is "gpu_allow_invalid_fetch_constants" but I can't imagine that's what you're meaning, thanks.
@@TheRhysWyrill Apologies, that is what I meant (don't know the exact config file names by memory). In my testing setting invalid fetch constants to true makes games crash less, log less errors to the log and makes some games go from black screen to fully playable. Have yet to find any issues arise from using it. render_target_path_d3d12 can also freely be set to rov (FL 12_1, Xboxes have FL 12_2 GPUs) which according to the config file's comments is more accurate
May also want to make d3d12_readback_resolve an option in the frontend, as it increases accuracy but has a performance penalty. d3d12_allow_variable_refresh_rate_and_tearing could also be made an option.
I think you're better off doing this on a base PC without any of the restrictions. You don't need anything special, as most emulators are cpu driven, mostly, so it can be done at a reasonable price point, depending on what class of hardware you want to emulate, you also have the option of being able to power ahead of what the Xbox can emulate. But the main advantage is the control you get and no restrictions. Heck, even A Steam Deck is quite good for this as long as you don't throw higher end systems at it, so anything up to Wii or PS2 and below should be ok on it. Still, I do wonder what Nintendo thinks of all this, they have a no mercy policy of shoot on sight with any of their games being shown by emulation lol, I'm surprised DF actually shown any Nintendo games with how touchy Nintendo are.
The series S is $100 cheaper than Steam Deck, not a 1:1 comparison for that reason alone. On paper the CPU on series S is more powerful than steam deck, you would struggle to build a PC that performs as well as series S at that price point, but yes PC is a bit more flexible when it comes to emulation do to emulators being designed around it for longer.
I got my Series S for $180 USD solely for emulation and streaming. You'd be hard pressed to find a PC that works as well for that price, and it would probably be a big office tower, not a slick little box under the TV.
@@jsVfPe3 Exactly! I got one for $200 new this past holiday season, you can't beat that price. It's genuinely unbeatable, and it's silent and takes up no space!
Emulation on the Xbox Series consoles is cool, but with how counter-intuitive it is compared to setting them up on PC and the fact that performance is inferior to what my monster gaming rig and even the Steam Deck can do, I stopped doing it on my Series S. I only emulate on my PC and my Steam Deck now, and sometimes on my Android phone, which is pretty powerful for emulation. Plus I can't emulate OG Xbox, PS3, Vita, Wii U or Switch on the Xbox Series consoles. Not to mention the lack of Vulkan and OpenGL support.
@@TXFDA I agree but savestates, GC controller and shaders are too hard to pass up. Also the standalone has a purple line at the bottom. I've decided to just go with the PS2 version with a texture pack on XBSX2.0.
@@hotdogflavoureddrink last update added save states, and well u can change the preset controls or even make ur own profile, and if u find shader stutter bad just turn choose skip draw
Thanks Oliver! I do have a question DF followers: Having a dedicated Series S that would be for solely this purpose - has anyone noticed the S "phone home" at any point? Would this be viable for an "always-off" system for emulation purposes for the life of the console; never requiring updating?
There‘s a stand alone dolphin version for xbox that works like a charm! Telling its a issue of the series s is a understandable but Not fully correct thought
This is a pretty limited view on this isn’t it? Thought there was standalone emus for ps2/GameCube and there was Wii U and switch emulation. Or am I dreaming?
No Wii U or Switch. There are standalones for PS2 and Gamecube/Wii though. Wish he woulda used the standalone for GC/Wii honestly, it runs way better than the Retroarch core. He at least used the PS2 standalone in the video, but he called it "SBSX2", it's actually "XBSX2.0". (Wii U and Switch, along with 3DS, original Xbox, and PS3 don't have ports because they don't use Direct X. Xbox consoles only have Direct X, so until the official emulators support DX, or we get a port of Mesa3D to do the conversion to DX, we can't really do anything with them.)
I have yet to understand why people keep saying that switching to death notice somehow inconvenient. You’re simply turn the machine off and turn it back on.
The only thing i disagree with here is the evaluation of the Xbox d-pad. I find it very good, very precise. It's really good for arcade shmups, like Cave's games.
I'm running Switch, PS3 and X360 emulators on a i7-5820K 4.5GHz (Xeon E5-1650 V3), 32GB 2133 quad-channel and a RX 570 8GB, how could an Ryzen 3700X with RX 6600 (Series S hardware) would be a worst hardware?!
It's not the hardware that's the issue. There's a couple big issues actually. One, is that if the emulators don't have Direct X support in the first place, they can't be ported to Xbox. Xbox ONLY has Direct X. No Open GL or Vulkan. Second issue, is that the apps/emulators need to be the shitty UWP format. UWP is a bit limited (we can't even get mouse support on it), and it only allows for 5.1gb of ram to be used. So if anything goes above that 5.1gb of ram, it just crashes. The emulators we DO have, tend to run really well. We have most consoles/handhelds from Atari 2600 up to the Wii (minus the original Xbox). I can play Mario Galaxy at damn near full speed. GameCube and PS2 work great 99% of the time. And anything lower than that runs really well too. PSP, Dreamcast, arcade games, the older 8 and 16 bit consoles and handhelds.
Me watching this on phone: "Man I wish I could emulate any old game I wanted..." [looks over at PC] "Oh yeah, I already can!....or I could just play more SUPERHOT" ❤
Yes, but it's also $200 more expensive. The Series S is more affordable, as it costs even less than a Steam Deck, while also being more powerful. For that reason it's a pretty great machine for emulation purposes.
Not really. The only difference will be how high you can upscale it. CPU performance is the determining factor in emulation performance and since Series S and Series X have very similar CPU performance, the difference should be negligable
Bro, I play me Series S daily. Games like Path of Exile run great on the little system, I think it is the second most underrated gaming console EVER, just behind the Dreamcast
Original Xbox games are really gonna get left behind with no new compatibility program titles and no retroarch core. Even removing licensed stuff plenty of games remain stuck on that hardware. It’s just very weird to me considering how good we know the X1 and Series machines emulate the ones we have seen. We’ve even seen systems like Switch run those games well enough.
Only reason we don't have an OG Xbox emulator on the Series consoles yet, is because Xemu (the main OG Xbox emulator) doesn't have Direct X support. The Xbox consoles ONLY have Direct X. So any emulator that doesn't have Direct X support, and uses Open GL or Vulkan instead, is out of the question to port over. The emulators would have to get Direct X support, or we'd have to somehow get a port of Mesa 3D to 'convert' Open GL and Vulkan to work on Direct X.
I can say as someone with extensive experience with retroarch the game scanning issue has been a problem as long as i can remember My first experience was with a 3b in 2016 and it was great, after the pi 4 was released everything went to hell
i remember modding the og Xbox to run emulators back in the day, console gamers should have an option to run homebrew software on a product they own. Still, let's hope emulation and game preservation keeps growing no matter what certain Japanese company says.
One day I'd like an "Emulation for complete dummies" video. Explain like how it all works, what all the jargon & acronyms mentioned in this video mean, and just break it all down as if I was a sheltered home-school kid without internet access, experiencing the world for the first time 😅
I used my Series X... I loved it on Retail mode, I was playing Super Mario World while chatting with friends. I guess I'll never be able to finish that game. I do have Dev mode from when I was school, many years ago and I have it setup on my Series X. When RetroArch on the Series consoles first started it was only Dev mode, so I was there from the start but, retail was so much better. Although I have Dev mode setup, I didn't re-install RetroArch on there yet. I wish retail could come back, THANKS NINTENDO ! (This is Nintendo's fault for no more Retail mode)
Also should be noted that emulators being uploaded to the retail store has *always* been against the store's terms of service. So it really shouldn't be a big shock to anyone that MS eventually shut it down.
Series S and Series X performance is the same. Emulation is heavily CPU-based, and both consoles have near identical CPUs, so the emulation is the same on either one.
I think the Xbox Series S is a great console for the price and at $250.00 or under its a steal for casual gamers that just want to play COD , Madden or the latest Gamepass games. In fact the Xbox Series S and Gamepass is still the best deal in gaming.
I have a series X but emulating on it was so frustrating that I just bought a wireless controller adapter for my laptop and connected that to the tv instead. I can even do switch and ps3 emulation from the laptop at 1080p. I recommend this method instead of emulating through an Xbox if you have a capable laptop.
@@dewinter1411 Weird... Series S is more capable system than SD by a long shot. You sold your less expensive, more capable emulation machine for the more expensive, less powerful one? Portability must be your priority, otherwise I don't understand the reasoning behind it.
@@corey2232 imo portability makes the biggest difference ever for old games. Its like im living what i dreamt of as a kid. A full on hand held ps2 at 60 fps? A childhood dream lol. Compared to sitting at my desk or in front of a tv to play an old game is meh. On top of that it runs ps4 and xbone era games that are on steam perfectly
as a low budget gamer, is it a bad idea for me to get a series s strictly for ps2 emulation? i have a ps5 but i use it as my mainly console and refuse to mod it in any way. and mini pcs that can run ps2 well just seem too damn expensive
I think the video is overly critical of the small rough edges of the experience given its audience here. These emulators run better and more often than majority of AAA releases nowadays. It’s ok to say it’s a home run. Retroarch game scanning - use manual scan, that works far better. Retroarch’s database sucks and it’s the same on desktop.
When you mentioned "limitations of dev mode" near the beginning, was this a reference to performance or available resources? I guess its hard to compare to retail with retail not really a thing right now, but perhaps some details on the differences, and how that might impact emulation.
You can't play your regular games, you can't use the social features, you can't do shit, so it's a pain to keep switching to dev mode and back, especially on a device that's supposed to be fast and convenient (e.g. Quick Resume).
People moaning about it not working in retail mode, be happy they allow anything at all. U are in a stand alone sandbox to do whatever u want with the console. I don’t see Sony doing that! Paying a month of streaming service prescriptions amount just one time, one time for all that! U have to be mad not to love it
I did buy the series s for emulation, but i think i want to sell it. It's not intuitive, and I already have a PC...But it is a FANTASTIC Game Pass machine for those people who want to essentially rent games. It has it's place, and I do entirely love the design, and it's tiny footprint.
i didnt even paid for Gamepass to play the games on it, just for the online access... now that they took out Retail, the 1$ dollar offer for new accounts, and the controller suffering from drift issues after six months of use (i bought it more than 2 years ago), im wishing to sell it.
I mean, not everyone has a disc drive. Series S doesn't have one. And the game got delisted ages ago. So if you don't already own it digitally, and you're using a Series S, the only way to play it would be to make a digital copy of your disc, and run it through the emulator.
I thought MS wanted to limit access to dev mode by making sure that as a dev your obligated to upload regularly new apps to the MS store? But one question was always holding me back to invest time into emulation: where to get all those images. ;o) It surely would be nice to experience some Wii games or even AMIGA classics on a XBox, but it seems that the people who do invested so much time into their collection (and often still do have the OG consoles as well) that it looks like quite a bit of work and time to get even one game running.
That whole "you have to upload apps or your account gets removed" thing hasn't actually been a thing for ages. They stopped removing dev accounts when people put up a big stink over it. By "images", do you mean the games themselves? If so. Legally speaking, ya know, legally.. You buy a game on a cartridge or disc through whatever means you need to (ebay, marketplace, garage sales, whatever), then use certain methods to dump a digital copy of that cart or disc to your computer. Some games, like PS2, can just be shoved into your PC's disc drive, and copied as a .iso file through certain programs. Some games, like 360 games, usually need an actual Xbox 360 to make digital copies. And then cartridge games usually need a USB cartridge-reader. It is illegal to just download a game online, or to make a legit copy and upload it for other people to download. Saying that, you might wanna consider google. The emulators themselves really don't take too much effort to set up. Some are easier than others. Retroarch's probably the most complicated, and even that's mostly just a matter of learning how the menus work.
So the decision of removing emulation was to made to increase unit sells, to get people buy a console to leave in dev mode to be a dedicated emulation machine?
Let it be abundantly clear: dev mode is not a workaround. It was the original way to do this. The "workaround" was people uploading emulators to the retail store and violating ToS.
Yes, exactly this. I set up dev mode initially and didn't know people were violating TOS to save $20 until they banned it.
Ok boomer , also I had age of empires 2 working on dos box pure / windows 98 before Alex on xbox , Alex the noob couldn't get the music to work and never showed it 😂
It was against their TOS from the beginning. It was unsafe too as it can have access to your details and network as it's not contained.
Thank you, the video kinda framed it as if microsoft removed the main access to emulation. Retail was never officially supported, dev mode has been the way from the start.
"Waaa don't disobey the corpos!"
FYI, when it comes to playing PS2, Gamecube, and Wii, the standalone emulators are WAY better than the Retroarch cores. The Retroarch cores for PCSX2 and Dolphin are super outdated. XBSX2.0, the PS2 emulator, and Standalone Dolphin can run most games I've tried at full speed with very minimal issues. And a lot of times if there is an issue, at least with a PS2 game, there's settings to fix it. For Dolphin, usually changing the shader settings can fix stuttering and stuff. If absolutely needed, you can even just set it to Skip Draw to get rid of most stuttering all together, but you might get some pop in, since it's not waiting for shader stuff to cache, it's just throwing you right in, then drawing those things as they happen on the fly.
As for the controller. I recommend getting a Wingman Xb2. It looks like a USB stick. You plug it into your console, and bam, you can connect different controllers to it. I use a PS4 controller to emulate PS1 and PS2 games on my Xbox, and an 8bitdo SN30 Pro for older consoles.
This issue with N64, is down to the fact that the N64 cores don't natively work with Direct X, so it's using Angle to run Open GL, and Angle is broken on newer versions of the cores. So updating them, makes them stop working. You should be able to go into core settings and tell some specific cores not to update, which will allow you to update the rest of your cores without accidentally updating the N64 cores. (I'd also recommend not updating the Saturn cores for the same reason).
As for DS. Yeah, the touch screen is a hard thing to get around. But you CAN set a cursor to the right stick, and a button to act as touching the screen. So as long as it's not a game with a LOT of touch screen stuff going on, you can get away with it. Pokemon for example would work fine.
For Xenia, you're going to get stuttering in most games, no matter what, for a while. The issue here, is that 360 games need to cache shaders. With Dolphin, there's a lot of pre-cached shaders built in, that tend to be re-used in a lot of games. So it doesn't have as much shader cache stuttering. But Xenia, doesn't do that. Most 360 games use their own shaders, and there's no built in "commonly used" shaders to draw from. So every time you come across something new in a 360 game, whether that be different lighting, light effects, special effects, models, textures, etc, etc, etc, the emulator has to save the shaders to a cache file. The thing is, once that shader's saved, it's saved. It doesn't need to be re-saved to the cache. So the next time you come across that same thing in-game, it won't have to save it again, and won't stutter to do so. The shaders also stay saved if you quit the game and load it up again later. So the more you play a 360 game on Xenia, the less the game will stutter. I had GTAV on Xenia, for example, running at full speed with no stuttering at all. It ran nearly identical to how it ran on an actual 360. But it took me about an hour of using a noclip mod and flying through the city to get all the shaders for it cached. Forza Horizon also uses a lot of the same shaders over the course of the whole game, so shader cache stuttering doesn't last incredibly long on it. Once the caching is done, Xenia tends to run at close to, or actual full speed. At least on the games it actually runs. Mind you, this is an issue with XENIA, not specifically the Xenia Xbox port. Xenia, even on PC, is still very much a WIP, and isn't remotely as functional as something like PCSX2 or Dolphin (or even RPCS3, which we don't have on Xbox). So don't go into Xenia expecting to play every 360 game ever.
----
Dev also doesn't really bring much in the way of extra "hassles" compared to retail emulation to be honest. Once the apps themselves are installed, the apps themselves work exactly the same as they did on retail. The biggest issue is that most of the time, FTP is busted and won't let you access internal local folders. So your best bet is to use an external storage of some kind to store your games, as well as the localstate folders for the main emulators. Then you'll almost never need to access the internal local folders anyway. And when you wanna copy things to the external storage, FTP still works fine for that, or you could just unplug it and plug it into your PC.
Very well (and thoroughly) said.
Thank you for this information brotha 👍 was wondering why my n64 games weren’t booting
Don't I know you from somewhere? 🤔
@@TheRhysWyrill Nope, not at all, who are you? 🤔
I've been using Aether for my PS2 games on Xbox. Let's me run King's field at 60fps, without the enemies speeding up!
Been using dev mode to emulate on my Xbox for a couple years. It works great.
Digital Foundry/Eurogamer "Microsoft may have done its best to lock down Xbox Series consoles from running emulators"
That's downright slander, they only blocked the Retail Mode workaround.
@@OneLastScholar Which is what the majority of people are using.
@@OneLastScholar Most consumers do only know retail mode.
I'd pay someone to set mine up.
@@deathtrooper2048 Retail mode was a recent method. People have been using dev mode method since Xbox One days.
Now I’m wondering how an emulator for a certain Japanese portable console would run a certain, insanely popular game…
Certainly better than the version Japanese portable console does.
probably at 30fps with the 3605 ea version with some visual fix mods and fps++ mod, yet we don't talk about this hush-hush stuff or certain ninjas will give you a visit.
No UWP version of any of those emulators unfortunately
Reginald Cell-DAR: Beers of the Klingon
Did you know with a simple russian mod that console can run every game at 720p 60 fps??
I’ve been using my Series S (and One before that) exclusively in Dev Mode for the better part of 3 years and it’s been amazing, in no small part to the amazing work of the devs (particularly SirMangler). Newer games I’ll tend to play on the PS5 because I like the controller ALOT more but the Xbox has very quickly shown that it’s one of the best values for money out there.
I thought the controller was a gimmick...but now that I have a PS5, I'm impressed.
I have also used Dev Mode for years - makes one wonder what the fuck did Ollie smoke when he said Microsoft "tried its best" to shutdown emulation on XBSX|S. They closed the Retail Mode workaround, nothing more.
It is truly a gimmick. Most games ignore its special features while it eats battery like crazy. I do both my emulation and premium gaming on a single machine, the XBSX, for this very reason.
@@OneLastScholar Dualsense makes a huge difference for immersion when implemented. Most games ignore it? Most current gen games take advantage of at least some of its features. It's fine for an individual to not care for the controller but to call it a gimmick is just ignorant.
@@beardalaxy no blu ray player on series s
Dolphin has a stand alone UWP app that improves performance on Series consoles especially in titles like Twilight Princess it’s basically unplayable in Retroarch once you reach the first swamp.
All you had to do was have an ini file containing Hyrule field speed hack based in the region you got your ROM from, and add to saves/user/game settings, And the game works perfectly and I even beat the game after patching the game with this hack on xbox
Wait, why my comment got cut in half, I was explaining to you how to patch the game with a hack that fix performance issues and the game fixes to 30 fps
I disagree with having it set up as a standalone console. Yes it’s kind of a pain to set it up initially, but once it’s going you literally open one app to get in or out of dev mode and you’re golden. Maybe for the roommates they might need a 5 min tutorial if they wanna jump on it but it’s really not that hard lol
Click safe exit, wait a few minutes (make a cup of tea) come back to retail.
@@jimmelton5846 a few mins?? Is it cause I’m on series X? It takes 30 seconds tops for me…
@UCDxR9ZXbK3vTDChm5xMMkUg maybe you don't have the amount of data I do (11tb connected at all times). Mine easily takes a few minutes on Series X.
@@jimmelton5846 damn. I thought consoles were supposed to be more convenient than pcs...
@@theteddychannel8529 seriously. Who is actually running 11TB on a console. More than likely they’re also slow drives bottlenecking the system and is not representative of the average user putting their games on a decent usb drive.
Retroarch’s dolphin core are very outdated. If you get the proper Dolphin MMJ standalone emulator, it works really well. So it’s not an Xbox Serie S problem, it’s an outdated emulator problem.
The stand alone is garbage too. Can't configurations controllers and Rogue Squadron games don't work and hang. It's still trash to be honest.
@Andre it's fine, you can't configure controls via console but can import configurations or set it up via dolphin PC. It's far from trash.
@@andree1991 it’s not true. It was updated since.
Edit: Modern Vintage Gamer even made a video about it. Almost 4 months ago…
@@awesomereviews1561 DUDE I AM PLAYING THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW AND IT IS AS I DESCRIBED IT. I HAVE THE LATEST VERSION INSTALLED. Go do the things I mentioned. You cannot.go ahead try it before you call me a liar
@@jimmelton5846 I have tried that too, the settings reset after you close the emulator or if you choose another controller profile. The file you imported is there but the emulator ignores it after it works only once. Go try it bro. It is extremely undercooked.
The complaints about not being able to run emulators in retail mode don’t make sense to me. Doing so was always against the terms of service. So them eventually blocking it shouldn’t be a surprise, especially since their relationships with game publishers are very important to them.
Ok course it makes sense. One day you can emulate in retail. The next day you can't. And because of Microsoft's DRM in system setup there's no offline workaround.
@@pixeljauntvr7774 One day you can emulate in retail against the rules, the next day they get around to enforcing the rules. Someone discovered a way around Microsoft's rules, and it eventually got too prominent (too many publishers complaining likely) and they close the loophole. I don't find that to be a confusing state of affairs.
There's no way that using dev mode isn't some sort of TOS violation in and of itself. It's just one Microsoft can't easily enforce because of how that mode is intended to work.
Not to mention this whole appealing to TOS bandwagon people seem to be jumping on here is farcical on the face of it. A big part of emulation has always involved "breaking TOS" and jailbreaking consoles, to the point where the go to handheld emulator for _years_ was the Sony PSP.
That people are suddenly so concerned with the TOS of some company that has no genuine interest in games preservation to begin with when it comes to emulation, is the real confusing state of affairs. It completely makes sense that they'd "ban" it, but this attitude that what we're doing currently is somehow... intended? No. Just no.
@@yewtewbstew547 Well unlike Dev mode, you can easily do more than just emulation in retail mode. Especially in terms of security. But I digress.
@@ScrapKing73 That person was me,
The dev mode isnt a work around it is the tried and true original way of using emulation since xbox one. Dev mode emulation damn sure isnt new. $20 to play almost any title you want is a pretty great deal.
I would disagree with the notion the main intended ish way of using emulators was retail mode. THAT was the workaround, and THAT was the one that got shut down, the Dev Mode way is not the backup, it's the intended way.
Technically speaking, Dev isn't the "intended" way either. Dev mode is specifically for people developing apps, to use as a way to test their apps before uploading them to the store. Dev mode emulation just happens to be a thing we can do. Both retail and dev emulation is something that just, could be done. Not intended either way.
But yeah, Retail was definitely something we weren't *supposed* to do. MS just wasn't cracking down on it too hard. They'd remove the apps, and ban the dev account. But they'd never console ban anyone for doing it, or even fully block them, so someone could just re-upload them immediately after. Until recently, anyway. When MS decided to block them outright so even if you did manage to download one, it won't open.
the devs and mods on xbox emulation hub server once said: "retroarch should only be used for 5th gen and below, anything beyond that should be ran on standalone emulators" (that includes ppsspp, xbsx2.0, dolphin, flycast and ofc xenia which isn't even available on RA)
And issues u encoutered with xenia are related to shader stutter which is an issue with the emulator itself and the only way to solve it is just stand still and let xenia cache all the necessary shaders
Not ppsspp or flycast, they run the same across standalone and retroarch on Xbox.
@@jimmelton5846 yes that is true, however the ppsspp RA core has less customization and some visual glitches in a minority of games, don't know about flycast however as I rarely use it
@the mighty lord of goblins not sure about less customisation, I'm pretty sure the options are identical. I use flycast and ppsspp cores and standalone. PS2 and Gamecube emulation I agree wholeheartedly however.
PPSSPP is 1:1. Performance on Retroarch and standalone is the same. Same goes for Flycast. I dunno about settings-wise, but there's also the fact that you have Retroarch settings too, as opposed to just the emulator settings to consider. Things like audio latency settings are only in RA, and not the standalones. There's also shaders (kinda jank with Flycast, but work great on PPSSPP in Retroarch), screen settings to change the actual size of the image (useful for if you want image borders), more hotkeys and things too.
But definitely use standalones for PS2, Dolphin, and obviously Xenia. For PPSSPP and Flycast, it's mostly a preference thing.
@@TXFDA doesn't that new unofficial ppsspp fork offer better performance ?, I heard it had some performance boosts and new features
Finding a native version of Dolphin should help out the framerate issues. Retroarch has its own baggage and overhead and it can drag emulation performance down. Breaking out of Retroarch and running something a little more native should provide a performance boost, if something like that is available.
It doesn't help that he even USED the Retroarch core for Dolphin. We have a perfectly good standalone Dolphin emulator on Xbox, that runs WAY better than the Retroarch core.
So awesome having Super Punchout running well on Series X
also wii punchout
I always know whose voice to expect when each DF video comes up. I dont know how 😅
Overall a bad attitude from the guys at DF, They should be in awe they can play emulators at all on a modern unhacked console but they come offas spoiled children complaining about nothing. Most emulators up to Dreamcast run great, N64 has never had good emulation on anything. A lot of Ps2/wii games run great also. Retail mode was always an exploit and should not have been used.
Yeah they do that sometimes. Kinda Snobby
Just an FYI: If you got any PC from the last few years you can almost certainly run GameCube/PS2 emulation pretty flawlessly even with the built-in GPU. DC/PS1 and lower will 100% work flawlessly. The emulators these days are just really good.
EDIT: Again, don't run anything higher than DC on Retroarch. Gamecube and PS2 cores are very out of date and run way better in standalone.
Gamecube, Wii (U) and PSP have by far the best emulators. Your experience with PS2 emulation may vary, out of the 5 or 6 titles I wanted to replay only two one of them ran decently, and even then the Gamecube versions ran way better. I had to run the games in 720p/1080p at most when I can play Mario Kart 8 in 4k.
@@LutraLovegood PCSX2 have been improved greatly the last year or two tho. Just be sure to download the nightly build because I don't think the stable ones have all the improvements yet.
This is amazing. Thanks for bring this information to the forefront. I have a spare Series S that can be used for this.
Doesn't need to be spare, you can switch from dev to retail as you please.
A spare series S?! Hey it's me ur brother...
@@jimmelton5846 I bought it for my kid until I found a Series X, and now it's only for travel, and works great in hotel rooms and AirBNBs
@Andre Thompson if you have that luxury then great, saves kids (and adults) potentially leaving dev mode without safe exit and deleting sideloaded apps :)
I have a spare XBox One S, how well does it do emulation?
Hopefully they're multithreaded.
I personally don't mind all the necessary work to set retroarch and xbsx2 up, the experience you get after doing that rewards you with a pretty average solid experience
I got dev mode best 20$ ever spent my n64 works its a youtube video to fix it and works even better my ps1 ps1 wii and gamecube runs in 4k
Great video, Oliver! I don't own a current gen XBox, but love seeing DF & MVG cover this topic.
One thing that was lost with the removal of retail mode emulation was the ability to use remote play. Bummer. Excellent video Oliver, thank you!
True thankfully twitch streaming and recording captures still work
That Series S looks rough, wtf did you guys do to it 🤣
Oliver should give that S a nice clean
With all due respect, Oliver seems to have a less serious attitude about cleaning his devices. His Steam Deck that he shows in his uploads looked filthy.
I wouldn't use the dolphin build on retroarch as there's a stand-alone build
Anyone who is familiar with the wacky world of handheld emulation systems, knows that the Nemesis is usually God Of War : Ghost of Sparta for the Sony PSP lol
Ghost of Sparta runs perfectly on a XBSS on standalone PPSSPP, in some ways it still is the best game in the franchise.
Surprised you didn’t test the Dolphin standalone UWP app. It runs a lot smoother than Retroarch for me.
He didnt becasue he is lazy and ignorant, this vidoe is basically an insult to the console.
Dev mode was always THE way to emulate, i don't know why people ever thought that doing this in retail mode and therefore violating TOS was ever a good idea.
Because it is a pain in the ass to boot in and out of dev mode.
@@_bigdipper takes 1 minute skill issue
@@168original7 I'd rather have something done in an instant rather than a minute, wbu?
$20 for endless amounts of older games?! Signed up and gaming already no questions asked
If you're going to buy a second system to handle emulation I don't see why you wouldn't just buy a small APU box. I'm sure it'll be at least a little bit more expensive but it'll have zero software restrictions, won't be subject to Microsoft randomly deciding they don't like emulation or changing Dev account ToS, and generally take up a whole lot less room which seems important for something that is likely to be a secondary system.
What I don't get, is why do that anyway? Swapping in and out of dev mode takes about a minute. Two minutes at most. The very first time you boot into Dev, it takes a bit longer, but after that, it takes a minute or so to swap. Most GAMES make you wait that long anyway, through company logos and stuff. If you're too impatient to wait a single minute to swap to dev mode, how are you gonna deal with waiting in games for logos, or cutscenes, or something. Especially older games where a lot of that wasn't skippable...
Unless you're planning on swapping between emulated games and retail games every couple of minutes, I really don't see the swap time to be a big deal. Swap to dev, play emulated games for a while, then swap to retail when you're done or wanna play retail games. Play those for a while, then swap back when it's time to emulate again.
@@TXFDA yeah I don't totally get it either. I guess maybe so you don't have to teach your kids how to do it or something but I think they'd have to be pretty young to struggle with the concept. To me the whole thing sounds like something that is cooler in concept than in practice.
@@PM-xc8oo I mean, if they're able to figure out how to USE the emulators, they should be able to figure out how to open an app to swap between retail and dev. Swapping back to retail is just a matter of opening the Safe-Exit app and it auto-swaps back over. Retail to Dev is just: Open an app, click swap, and it swaps over.
@@TXFDAthe only reason I would do that is to join parties, but even then I can just connect my headset to my phone
You got to admit the Xbox Series. S is a sleek ass looking console. I love the look of it now if we can get some games baby I'm all for it
I'm love with dev mode for emulation.
Have you got a video for Xbox series X running emulators or just the Series S? I would love to see one for Series X to see how much better the performance is with the emulators.
Been waitng for this video for years! Awesome!!
How come? Most of it has been possible for years on xbox.
I still feel its more cost effective to get a mini pc and then run launchbox on it and have all emulators in one place and all roms compiled neatly and probably better performance to
The series s can play some modern games too. Need to drop more to run modern games l
The fact that Microsoft is even letting us do the stuff in the first place is kind of already a miracle.
Iv gotta say, love my series s! It’s amazing in dev mode, I can play whatever emulator I want up till the the late 2000s. U can even go online through emulation too! The Xbox series is seriously the best console to play retro games and is more backwards compatible with psp, ps1/2 than Sony has ever been. ! U can upscale and even add texture packs and translations. Even mods on old games are out there. Anyone thinking of getting one, I got mine for 150pounds and then like another 20. So for 170 pounds u get access to not only Xbox and game pass but cloud gaming and thousands and thousands of retro games. Only issue is the storage however if u don’t play a lot of series games then u can just use a basic usb storage drive!
5:05 I might be wrong, but i think this has to do with Mupen64 cores defaulting to OpenGL or Vulkan rendering after update, which is unavailable on the UWP due to XSX and XSS only supporting DX11/DX12 render. It can be fixed through editing the config files IIRC.
I mostly use my SS for 360 and One games! Love the improved SSD loading times. Should also count as "emulation" right? 😂
Imagine buying a next gen consoles just to play old games. Really feel for you guys.
@@Wiiillllson151 Series S is cheaper than a new ps4 , so I don't see the problem about buying one to play old games.
@@steffan9415That guy said some incredibly dumb stuff, I'm surprised you even responded to them.
Starting with "imagine" just proves they ain't worth talking to 😂
I didn't expect digitalfoundry do an emulation video, that's a pleasant surprise!
Very unpleasant to me tho, this video is lazy and incomplete, the information is outdated and does a disservice to what the console is capable of, hes literally using a verison of the dolphin emulator that is years old.
For those who dont know, there is a emulator dor XBXO and XBXS/S that are still running fine in retail mode. It's paid, but still works like a charm.
Which one?
Just get over retail and get dev mode
I wanna see a performance comparison in emulation between the series S and X
It probably barely is any different besides if you want o upscale to resolutions like 4K
It's not really necessary. Emulation is heavily CPU-based. Both the S and X have nearly identical CPUs. So emulation is almost exactly the same on both consoles.
That's why most of the time, we recommend buying a Series S if emulation is a major point for why you want an Xbox. A series X is better for actual retail Xbox games, but for emulation, they both work the same. So if you care more about emulation, than normal Xbox games, a Series S is great. But get an X if you care about retail games, since retail games tend to run better, have One X enhancements, and can run at 4k.
Microsoft didnt "make it a pain." Its very clear that other companies demanded that Microsoft patch out retail mode emulation in order to avoid legal trouble. If it was up to them we'd probably still have retail mode emulation.
I agree honestly. We had emulation on retail for years, and at most, Microsoft would remove the apps from the store, and ban the dev account that uploaded them. They never tried to block emulators outright, nor did they attempt to console ban the person uploading them (despite the fact that they easily could have). They did just enough to uphold the Terms of Service that says you can't upload emulators to the store, but left enough wiggle room for someone to just get a new dev account and reupload them.
They only just started blocking the apps fully. I don't really think it's Nintendo specifically causing a fuss, like a lot of people think. But I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo (and even Sony) was at least part of why MS finally got serious about blocking the emulators.
It was Nintendo fault that it's not in retail mode anymore smh
Interesting. N64 games worked pretty well for me but I couldn’t get PS1 games to work
Missing bios
My Nintendo 64 core does not work for me, I have all bios.
@Ronan Faria you updated the core and it broke, n64 doesn't require bios.
PS1 (along with some other cores here and there) requires a bios file to run. Without it, games simply won't work. Same with PS2 emulation.
I find Oliver's voice very tough to understand on bigger speakers. It's very bassy and lacks clearness. On smartphone speakers it's alright. I've been noticing this for a long time now and I just wanted to give this feedback, maybe you can look into it and do some further equalising to the voice track in the future. Maybe it's the mixing environment. That being said I thoroughly enjoy all of DFs videos which is why I take the time to write this
Perhaps new ears for Christmas?
@@stewartdahamman and then?
@@AuchNLauch Retest to confirm, if still present - could be local remixing within your cranium.
@@stewartdahamman 😝
It was also really weird how you were able to get emulators in regular Xbox mode, it wasn't something you could just download from the Xbox store or something.
didn't you have to like, sign up for a discord server?
@@beardalaxy yup
Thanks for the video, been thinking about getting the S for emulation.
If you have a decent android phone you can just plug it into your tv and get a much better experience. If not you can buy much stronger portable emulators for the same price. Just need a decent controller. the kingkongpro2 by Gulikit has been amazing for me. It has holosense triggers and joysticks while feeling premium and with amazing battery life for 70 USD. If you also want it for Xbox games then a Series S can be worth it.
if you are spending the extra cash on a 2nd console just for dev mode, you might as well just buy a used optiplex and ram a GTX 1050 or RX 580 in there. not only will it be cheaper, but you will be able to use all the modern emulators which rely on Vulkan. you also won't be restricted to which input devices you can use.
That's crazy, the XBOX series controller has one of the best D-Pads ever made 🤷🏾♂️
Yeah it's so comfortable, loved playing Cuphead with it
Friendly reminder that you can put a texture pack that replace the PS2 textures with the hd ones
I was talking about re4 (sorry i forgot to mention it lol
Fact
This video was not well researched.
Most people know the bare minumum when it comes to emulation. If you want in depth stuff on emulation ETA Prime, Taki Udon, The Phawx, and Retro Game Corps are your go to sources
@@crestofhonor2349 I know, I myself do a lot of emulation.
But I expected a lot better from DF.
Nice to see an emulation video. What I'd be extra curious about is how a Series X handles some of these more demanding emulators, versus a Series S.
No real difference aside from internal resolution.
They actually both emulate about the same. The Series S, and Series X have nearly identical CPUs, which is what emulation mostly relies on. So you get pretty much the exact same emulation experience on either console.
Pro-Tip: Edit Xenia's config and allow illegal texture format decoding. Huge compatibility boost in my experience
Could you elaborate on this? The Xenia config mentions nothing in relation to "allow illegal texture format decoding", closest thing is "gpu_allow_invalid_fetch_constants" but I can't imagine that's what you're meaning, thanks.
@@TheRhysWyrill Apologies, that is what I meant (don't know the exact config file names by memory). In my testing setting invalid fetch constants to true makes games crash less, log less errors to the log and makes some games go from black screen to fully playable. Have yet to find any issues arise from using it.
render_target_path_d3d12 can also freely be set to rov (FL 12_1, Xboxes have FL 12_2 GPUs) which according to the config file's comments is more accurate
May also want to make d3d12_readback_resolve an option in the frontend, as it increases accuracy but has a performance penalty. d3d12_allow_variable_refresh_rate_and_tearing could also be made an option.
I think you're better off doing this on a base PC without any of the restrictions.
You don't need anything special, as most emulators are cpu driven, mostly, so it can be done at a reasonable price point, depending on what class of hardware you want to emulate, you also have the option of being able to power ahead of what the Xbox can emulate.
But the main advantage is the control you get and no restrictions.
Heck, even A Steam Deck is quite good for this as long as you don't throw higher end systems at it, so anything up to Wii or PS2 and below should be ok on it.
Still, I do wonder what Nintendo thinks of all this, they have a no mercy policy of shoot on sight with any of their games being shown by emulation lol, I'm surprised DF actually shown any Nintendo games with how touchy Nintendo are.
Build a PC for $250 or less, you’re missing the point
The series S is $100 cheaper than Steam Deck, not a 1:1 comparison for that reason alone. On paper the CPU on series S is more powerful than steam deck, you would struggle to build a PC that performs as well as series S at that price point, but yes PC is a bit more flexible when it comes to emulation do to emulators being designed around it for longer.
I got my Series S for $180 USD solely for emulation and streaming. You'd be hard pressed to find a PC that works as well for that price, and it would probably be a big office tower, not a slick little box under the TV.
@@jsVfPe3 Exactly! I got one for $200 new this past holiday season, you can't beat that price. It's genuinely unbeatable, and it's silent and takes up no space!
Emulation on the Xbox Series consoles is cool, but with how counter-intuitive it is compared to setting them up on PC and the fact that performance is inferior to what my monster gaming rig and even the Steam Deck can do, I stopped doing it on my Series S. I only emulate on my PC and my Steam Deck now, and sometimes on my Android phone, which is pretty powerful for emulation.
Plus I can't emulate OG Xbox, PS3, Vita, Wii U or Switch on the Xbox Series consoles.
Not to mention the lack of Vulkan and OpenGL support.
Thank you so much for highlighting RE4's framepacing issue. I don't like the standalone version of Dolphin as it is lacking a lot of options.
While true, the standalone also runs quite a bit better than the Retroarch core. The RA core is super outdated at this point. Same with the PS2 core.
@@TXFDA I agree but savestates, GC controller and shaders are too hard to pass up. Also the standalone has a purple line at the bottom. I've decided to just go with the PS2 version with a texture pack on XBSX2.0.
@@hotdogflavoureddrink last update added save states, and well u can change the preset controls or even make ur own profile, and if u find shader stutter bad just turn choose skip draw
@@themightylordofgoblins6880 Hey there managed to get the new update but where is the option to change controller?
@@hotdogflavoureddrink there are already pre made profiles and if u wanna make a custom one, u still have to edit the ini/chang them in pc dolphin
Please do not run Dolphin under Retroarch. It's an outdated broken version that was not made by the Dolphin team.
Thanks Oliver! I do have a question DF followers:
Having a dedicated Series S that would be for solely this purpose - has anyone noticed the S "phone home" at any point? Would this be viable for an "always-off" system for emulation purposes for the life of the console; never requiring updating?
you're welcome!
-Oliver
There‘s a stand alone dolphin version for xbox that works like a charm!
Telling its a issue of the series s is a understandable but Not fully correct thought
This is a pretty limited view on this isn’t it? Thought there was standalone emus for ps2/GameCube and there was Wii U and switch emulation. Or am I dreaming?
No Wii U or Switch. There are standalones for PS2 and Gamecube/Wii though. Wish he woulda used the standalone for GC/Wii honestly, it runs way better than the Retroarch core. He at least used the PS2 standalone in the video, but he called it "SBSX2", it's actually "XBSX2.0".
(Wii U and Switch, along with 3DS, original Xbox, and PS3 don't have ports because they don't use Direct X. Xbox consoles only have Direct X, so until the official emulators support DX, or we get a port of Mesa3D to do the conversion to DX, we can't really do anything with them.)
@@TXFDA thanks for the response
Now do YUZU on a decent PC running Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, has DF got big enough balls :P
I have yet to understand why people keep saying that switching to death notice somehow inconvenient. You’re simply turn the machine off and turn it back on.
Another banger from Oli.
The only thing i disagree with here is the evaluation of the Xbox d-pad. I find it very good, very precise. It's really good for arcade shmups, like Cave's games.
i wanted to buy the series s just for emulation. but as people have said for the same price you can get a apu pc and run everything plus more.
Be interesting to see if Nintendo are super-happy with you emulating their games. Small channels get hammered showing this shit.
They are always happy about their games being shown in emulators, in fact, they've got a gun ready to shoot them on sight lol.
I'm running Switch, PS3 and X360 emulators on a i7-5820K 4.5GHz (Xeon E5-1650 V3), 32GB 2133 quad-channel and a RX 570 8GB, how could an Ryzen 3700X with RX 6600 (Series S hardware) would be a worst hardware?!
It's not the hardware that's the issue. There's a couple big issues actually. One, is that if the emulators don't have Direct X support in the first place, they can't be ported to Xbox. Xbox ONLY has Direct X. No Open GL or Vulkan. Second issue, is that the apps/emulators need to be the shitty UWP format. UWP is a bit limited (we can't even get mouse support on it), and it only allows for 5.1gb of ram to be used. So if anything goes above that 5.1gb of ram, it just crashes. The emulators we DO have, tend to run really well. We have most consoles/handhelds from Atari 2600 up to the Wii (minus the original Xbox). I can play Mario Galaxy at damn near full speed. GameCube and PS2 work great 99% of the time. And anything lower than that runs really well too. PSP, Dreamcast, arcade games, the older 8 and 16 bit consoles and handhelds.
Can we have a tech review of Gollum? 😊
You have made a big mistake choosing Retroarch for Dolphin...the standalone version is much better. 2K/60fps in Series S for most games.
Why would you test Street Fighter 4 360 emulated version when it is available natively on any xbox 360 forward?
Me watching this on phone: "Man I wish I could emulate any old game I wanted..."
[looks over at PC] "Oh yeah, I already can!....or I could just play more SUPERHOT" ❤
Wouldn't these games run even better on a Series X, since it's more powerful?
Correct. You can easily bump up to 4K or above no issues, and those 60fps/widescreen/texture patches run way smoother.
Yes, but it's also $200 more expensive. The Series S is more affordable, as it costs even less than a Steam Deck, while also being more powerful.
For that reason it's a pretty great machine for emulation purposes.
@@corey2232 I mean yeah if you ONLY get it for emulation. I have it for Game Pass as well
Not really. The only difference will be how high you can upscale it. CPU performance is the determining factor in emulation performance and since Series S and Series X have very similar CPU performance, the difference should be negligable
@@crestofhonor2349 not on XBSX2 if you’re actually using D3D12 renderer. That still uses GPU resources.
Bro, I play me Series S daily. Games like Path of Exile run great on the little system, I think it is the second most underrated gaming console EVER, just behind the Dreamcast
Original Xbox games are really gonna get left behind with no new compatibility program titles and no retroarch core. Even removing licensed stuff plenty of games remain stuck on that hardware. It’s just very weird to me considering how good we know the X1 and Series machines emulate the ones we have seen. We’ve even seen systems like Switch run those games well enough.
Only reason we don't have an OG Xbox emulator on the Series consoles yet, is because Xemu (the main OG Xbox emulator) doesn't have Direct X support. The Xbox consoles ONLY have Direct X. So any emulator that doesn't have Direct X support, and uses Open GL or Vulkan instead, is out of the question to port over. The emulators would have to get Direct X support, or we'd have to somehow get a port of Mesa 3D to 'convert' Open GL and Vulkan to work on Direct X.
Can't wait for PS3 backwards compatibility on a Xbox console
I can say as someone with extensive experience with retroarch the game scanning issue has been a problem as long as i can remember
My first experience was with a 3b in 2016 and it was great, after the pi 4 was released everything went to hell
i remember modding the og Xbox to run emulators back in the day, console gamers should have an option to run homebrew software on a product they own. Still, let's hope emulation and game preservation keeps growing no matter what certain Japanese company says.
One day I'd like an "Emulation for complete dummies" video.
Explain like how it all works, what all the jargon & acronyms mentioned in this video mean, and just break it all down as if I was a sheltered home-school kid without internet access, experiencing the world for the first time 😅
Are you?
@Mostly Penny Cat May as well be. I haven't emulated anything since emulating nearly everything that existed to that point on Dreamcast
@@corey2232
That's a blast from the past.
Bleemcast!
I remember buying that
I used my Series X... I loved it on Retail mode, I was playing Super Mario World while chatting with friends. I guess I'll never be able to finish that game. I do have Dev mode from when I was school, many years ago and I have it setup on my Series X. When RetroArch on the Series consoles first started it was only Dev mode, so I was there from the start but, retail was so much better. Although I have Dev mode setup, I didn't re-install RetroArch on there yet.
I wish retail could come back, THANKS NINTENDO ! (This is Nintendo's fault for no more Retail mode)
It should be noted that Microsoft didn't make this change for the lols, they did it due to legal reasons caused by litigation from Nintendo.
Also should be noted that emulators being uploaded to the retail store has *always* been against the store's terms of service. So it really shouldn't be a big shock to anyone that MS eventually shut it down.
So how is the performance of the Series X? Van you please do a video on that?
Series S and Series X performance is the same. Emulation is heavily CPU-based, and both consoles have near identical CPUs, so the emulation is the same on either one.
@@TXFDA Thank you 👍🏻
Dude what did u do with your xbox, its all banged up
I think the Xbox Series S is a great console for the price and at $250.00 or under its a steal for casual gamers that just want to play COD , Madden or the latest Gamepass games.
In fact the Xbox Series S and Gamepass is still the best deal in gaming.
I have a series X but emulating on it was so frustrating that I just bought a wireless controller adapter for my laptop and connected that to the tv instead. I can even do switch and ps3 emulation from the laptop at 1080p. I recommend this method instead of emulating through an Xbox if you have a capable laptop.
Steam deck is the goated emulation device imo. The way it all is integrated in steams UI is honestly insanely great
Agree. Sold my series s after getting a Steam Deck and seeing what it could do.
@@dewinter1411 Tbf all Xbox Series emulation can run from a couple of tidy frontends.
@@dewinter1411 Weird... Series S is more capable system than SD by a long shot. You sold your less expensive, more capable emulation machine for the more expensive, less powerful one?
Portability must be your priority, otherwise I don't understand the reasoning behind it.
Try running rpcs3/xenia/yuzu and ryujinx, the ROG ally however seems to be the true goat for emulation
@@corey2232 imo portability makes the biggest difference ever for old games. Its like im living what i dreamt of as a kid. A full on hand held ps2 at 60 fps? A childhood dream lol. Compared to sitting at my desk or in front of a tv to play an old game is meh.
On top of that it runs ps4 and xbone era games that are on steam perfectly
Definitely hilarious the far more powerful X can play more Sony games for free then the underpowered, featureless, gameless PeasantStation5 can.
Fact lol
and why fanboying about it both are just plastic boxes why sucking a company dick
as a low budget gamer, is it a bad idea for me to get a series s strictly for ps2 emulation? i have a ps5 but i use it as my mainly console and refuse to mod it in any way. and mini pcs that can run ps2 well just seem too damn expensive
I guess. It could work
@@oo--7714 I ended up getting a mini pc. got a loan from someone that help me get it.
I think the video is overly critical of the small rough edges of the experience given its audience here. These emulators run better and more often than majority of AAA releases nowadays. It’s ok to say it’s a home run. Retroarch game scanning - use manual scan, that works far better. Retroarch’s database sucks and it’s the same on desktop.
I thought was the original way to do it. And for the games you get to play, I wouldn’t call it a “pain,” especially for the price point.
It is, and predates it by...years? People were doing it on the Xbox One X hardware certainly. DF might be putting the cart ahead of the horse.
When you mentioned "limitations of dev mode" near the beginning, was this a reference to performance or available resources?
I guess its hard to compare to retail with retail not really a thing right now, but perhaps some details on the differences, and how that might impact emulation.
You can't play your regular games, you can't use the social features, you can't do shit, so it's a pain to keep switching to dev mode and back, especially on a device that's supposed to be fast and convenient (e.g. Quick Resume).
@@rx1834 lol I don't have beef with those things. That's Dev mode, it's for developers, people who don't mind putting a little effort into things.
@@rx1834 sounds like a waste of an Xbox in that case, just buy a used PC to to do all the emulations
People moaning about it not working in retail mode, be happy they allow anything at all. U are in a stand alone sandbox to do whatever u want with the console. I don’t see Sony doing that! Paying a month of streaming service prescriptions amount just one time, one time for all that! U have to be mad not to love it
XBOX EMPIRE HERE: I AM GETTING STARFIELD BOX ART TATTOO ON MY WHOLE BACK.
Why aren’t you using the standalone emulators available? Retroarch isnt great
I did buy the series s for emulation, but i think i want to sell it. It's not intuitive, and I already have a PC...But it is a FANTASTIC Game Pass machine for those people who want to essentially rent games. It has it's place, and I do entirely love the design, and it's tiny footprint.
i didnt even paid for Gamepass to play the games on it, just for the online access... now that they took out Retail, the 1$ dollar offer for new accounts, and the controller suffering from drift issues after six months of use (i bought it more than 2 years ago), im wishing to sell it.
im sure someone would said: wow, but its so cheap to buy dev mode or gamepass!
*yeah, for the first world countries.*
not sure why would you run Forza Horizon in dev mode as it's fully back compat with current get and runs smoothly, though 30fps only
I mean, not everyone has a disc drive. Series S doesn't have one. And the game got delisted ages ago. So if you don't already own it digitally, and you're using a Series S, the only way to play it would be to make a digital copy of your disc, and run it through the emulator.
Never expected DF to make a video showcasing emulation of Nintendo consoles. Feeling brave aren't we?
Dev mode is the way I run my Xbox emulation
Emulators are almost always too involved for me, plug and play even with original hardware settings is my preferred.
I thought MS wanted to limit access to dev mode by making sure that as a dev your obligated to upload regularly new apps to the MS store?
But one question was always holding me back to invest time into emulation: where to get all those images. ;o)
It surely would be nice to experience some Wii games or even AMIGA classics on a XBox, but it seems that the people who do invested so much time into their collection (and often still do have the OG consoles as well) that it looks like quite a bit of work and time to get even one game running.
That whole "you have to upload apps or your account gets removed" thing hasn't actually been a thing for ages. They stopped removing dev accounts when people put up a big stink over it.
By "images", do you mean the games themselves? If so. Legally speaking, ya know, legally.. You buy a game on a cartridge or disc through whatever means you need to (ebay, marketplace, garage sales, whatever), then use certain methods to dump a digital copy of that cart or disc to your computer. Some games, like PS2, can just be shoved into your PC's disc drive, and copied as a .iso file through certain programs. Some games, like 360 games, usually need an actual Xbox 360 to make digital copies. And then cartridge games usually need a USB cartridge-reader.
It is illegal to just download a game online, or to make a legit copy and upload it for other people to download. Saying that, you might wanna consider google.
The emulators themselves really don't take too much effort to set up. Some are easier than others. Retroarch's probably the most complicated, and even that's mostly just a matter of learning how the menus work.
If you're talking about cover art, Dolphin downloads them automatically, when you add the rom.
That's a tired looking Xbox series s. Probably well loved.
So the decision of removing emulation was to made to increase unit sells, to get people buy a console to leave in dev mode to be a dedicated emulation machine?