After years of rumors and speculation, original Xbox games are now finally playable on PC thanks to the early access debut of official Xbox Backward Compatibility on Windows 11. While Microsoft has promised that the program will be significantly expanded in the coming months with the addition of Achievements, among other things, dataminers made some interesting discoveries which suggest that Xbox 360 games are likely coming to PC in the future.
The reason why this is very likely is simple. The four backward compatible games now available on PC, including Fuzion Frenzy, use the same tech that the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X|S use for running X360 games, which is called Xe03.
"Yesterday, XBOX shipped back compat titles as native Windows 11 apps. I grabbed one, Fuzion Frenzy and spent a night taking it completely apart. What's inside is wilder than 'a 360 emulator for PC,'" wrote Security Researcher Milenko on X. "The binaries call the emulator XeO3 which is also the chemical compound, Xenon trioxide.. fitting. Considering its an unstable Xenon oxidation state. (Xbox devs got jokes) and it's the same tech Xbox One/Series use for 360 back compat, now repackaged as a GDK/MSIX desktop app. It emulates the 360's Xenon PowerPC CPU (PPCState), the 360 hypervisor (Hvx calls), and the Xenos GPU on top of Direct3D."*
What's interesting is how everything is handled. According to Milenko, it's essentially emulation of the X360 which then emulates the original console, a rather complicated setup to achieve Backward Compatibilit on PC.
Tech-savvy users, however, didn't stop at just datamining the four PC Backward Compatible games. The developers behind XWine1, an Xbox One compatibility layer for PC, added the Xe03 code to specific components of their compatibility layer, which resulted not only in other original Xbox titles running on PC, but also some Xbox 360 games, such as Plants vs. Zombies.
Having an Xbox 360 emulator already up and almost running with the complicated setup described above wouldn't make much sense if there were no plans to bring games from the second generation Xbox on PC, so it's easy to assume this will eventually happen at some point. While the expansion of Backward Compatibility was expected with Project Helix aiming to bridge the gap between PC and console gaming, it's still great to hear that it will soon be possible to play more all-time classics with enhanced visuals and new features.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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