Dataminers Uncover Xbox 360 Game Compatibility on PC Through Backward Compatibility Feature

Just hours after Microsoft unveiled its Xbox Backward Compatibility initiative for PC, dataminers have uncovered that the emulator in question isn’t just any Xbox emulator—it’s actually an Xbox 360 emulator running Xefu, the same technology that allowed Xbox 360 hardware to emulate original Xbox titles.

To clarify, this means we’re looking at an emulator within an emulator. As noted by some keen observers, this revelation came from dataminer Lunarixus, who suggested that this likely confirms Xbox 360 games will also be backward compatible in the future.

By merging Microsoft’s newly released PC port of XeO3 with certain elements from XWine1, specifically SlimEra, it’s now possible to run dumped backward-compatible Xbox 360 and original Xbox games before they officially hit PC, albeit with varying levels of success.

The team behind the Xbox One translation layer project, XWine1, has already managed to run several original Xbox and Xbox 360 ROMs on Microsoft’s Xbox Backward Compatibility emulator, confirming that it can indeed handle Xbox 360 titles, despite Microsoft currently offering only four original Xbox games through the service.

Honestly, this isn’t exactly shocking news. While it’s great to have confirmation, many of us suspected that Microsoft’s new Xbox PC emulator was setting the stage for Xbox 360 games in the future.

It’s also reassuring to know that beloved Xbox 360 titles won’t be confined to consoles forever, especially since classics like Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon aren’t available on any other platforms. Here’s hoping for an announcement about Fable 2 soon, as I’d love to see it become more accessible before Playground Games launches the Fable reboot next year.