How to turn your Xbox Series X/S into an emulation powerhouse

Enlarge / Why play new games on these expensive consoles when you can emulate old ones? (credit: Sam Machkovech)

After a new console is released, it usually takes hackers months or years to find a hole in the console's security that lets them install homebrew software like emulators. So it may come as a surprise that you can already load RetroArch-and its vast array of emulation cores for dozens of classic systems-on the newly released Xbox Series X/S consoles.

The installation vector here comes not through an unforeseen security hole, but through Microsoft's policy of allowing any retail Xbox One console to become a full-fledged dev kit. After promising that functionality in 2013, there were signs that Microsoft was thinking of abandoning those plans in 2014. By 2016, though, Microsoft officially opened up the Xbox One, allowing registered Universal Windows Platform (UWP) developers to load and test content directly onto a stock retail console.

Enter Libretro, which decided in late 2018 that it would commit to creating an Xbox One-compatible UWP build of its popular emulator package. That version launched in Alpha in 2019 and has been updated sporadically since. Ars has confirmed that a new build works on the Xbox Series X as well, allowing your new console to pretend to be anything from an Atari 2600 to a Wii, with a whole lot of consoles in between.

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