October 26, 2008by Chris

Right now (Oct. 2008) there are no real Xbox 360 emulators out there because our home technology is way too slow (save for a stack of daisy chained Playstation 3's running Linux with strange emulation software downloaded from the year 2030).

An XBox 360 emulator will not be available for many years - perhaps decades.

It will be a challenge (but not an impossibility) to duplicate the brute power of the three core PowerPC IBM-engineered brain of the 360 plus the utilization of it.

Microsoft has made it difficult to emulate the 360 with an intricate security system and a custom version of Direct X but with enough time, you probably will be playing emulated XBox 360 games on some sort of futuristic pad or system before you're old and gray.

Beware of torrents or other nefarious downloads claiming to be XBox 360 emulators - these are surely trojans that will destroy your system and burn down your house. (Xeon360 is a trojan!)

So nothing will emulate the 360 but what can the 360 emulate? Right now: the NES.

The original Nintendo has successfully been emulated in the 360 and there talk of a Genesis emulator. The Microsoft XNA developer kit has been used to emulate Space Invaders (and the NES too but it runs at about 60% of normal speed).

Does the 360 play original Xbox games? Yes it does. Microsoft has engineered a software emulator to do just that. See the backwards compatibility tab for further info.

At the moment, you'd need a super computer to emulate the XBox 360, no emulator projects are currently under way and it is anyone's guess when a real 360 emulator will come out. Anything that is currently circulating the 'net at this moment pretending to be an 360 emulator is surely a virus or a trojan.

Want to play XBox 360 games right now? Buy a 360.

CS 10-8