You might think emulators only exist for retro consoles, and for the most part that’s true, but we might some day be seeing PS4 and Xbox One games – regardless of the legality of the move – on a PC near you.
For the last decade or so, emulating new console games has been almost impossible. Xbox 360 and PS3 code was so unique to their respective consoles, and required such a degree of computing power from a PC, that no working emulators for either console were ever released.
But speaking with Slashdot, software engineer Ben Vanik – who builds emulators in his spare time – says that the newest console’s decision to stick to a very PC-like architecture, with x-86 chips and AMD graphics processors, means that this could soon change.
“It would be easier to create a PS4 or Xbox One emulator within the next year or so than it would be to create a PS3 or Xbox 360 emulator that ran at the speed of the device,” he says.
Before Sony and Microsoft’s legal teams start freaking out, not that this isn’t going to happen tomorrow. Vanik says he’s not working on any new emulators himself (though he does claim to have an Xbox 360 emulator almost done), and despite the apparent ease of bringing game code over, he says it’s impossible to emulate PS4 or Xbox One games until the consoles themselves have been hacked. Which could be months away. Or years. Or never.
Comments
5 responses to “People Might Actually Be Able To Emulate The PS4 And Xbox One”
Um, the original Xbox (I hate saying that and not Xbox1) used an X86 pentium processor and an custom Nvidia chip based on standard pc parts of the time, and 10 years latter there still is no emulator.
Whereas the PS2 and gamecube/Wii were far removed from pc hardware and both have fully functioning emulators, so I don’t think the new consoles having close to pc hardware means anything.
Both the new consoles will have their challenges in trying to emulate, the PS4 custom API and the Xbox1’s EDRAM.And its unknown how hard the encryption is, it took years to “crack” the PS3.
I might add that PS4 and XBone might have custom hardware as well, which need to be emulated.
http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/xbox/
Original Xbox Emulators exist, do some research, also cant wait for that xb360 emulator
i felt the heat from that burn
None of those work though, barely have the compatibility rate of the other consoles emulators
Yeah I was going to say here – PS1, PS2, and Xbox emulators are all currently available and with some know-how can run games pretty well – I already have FF12 running on an emulator that makes it look like a HD Remake.
But I completely agree as to where this article is going, if you know anything about the PS3 you’ll know that it has always had issues with emulating that CPU with it’s uniquely complicated core structure, where as xbox 360 I believe would be no easier/harder than PS4 – you just require a bit more power with emulating PS4 sure.
You could almost say that given the path consoles have been taking eventually it wont be “emulating” as the games could be launched directly from your PC as some hacked version of the game.
TLDR – PS4 games would be much more similarly built to a PC version now as opposed to a PS1,2,3/Xbox version not processing similar to a PC version back in it’s time.
I prefer to call the original xbox as the “xbox og” or “XBog”
if sony and Microsoft were smart. they should provide the O/S for AMD based hardware equal to or above specs. and just sell more games! they would maximise market share!