You have to remember one thing, and that is that in this case the Xenia emulator only supports “xinput” controllers, so you will not be able to play with the keyboard and mouse or any controller, but you will have an Xbox 360 / Xbox One controller or compatible (using -xinput) play.
Install Xenia, Xbox 360 emulator for PC
The first thing you should do is access the Xenia project website and download the latest version of the emulator. Access the link we just gave you and click on “master” to start downloading.
What you will download will be a file called xenia_master.zip, which, as you can imagine, is a compressed file that you have to open on your PC’s hard drive first.
As you can see, you don’t even need to install anything, just download the file and open it on your hard drive and you will be ready to use the emulator.
How you use the games in Xenia
Xenia also works well with games in ISO format like XBLA files, but you will still need to have it on your hard drive or external storage, that is, you will not be able to play Xbox 360 games using direct disc. So you will need to download a digital copy of the game you want to play, or start making a backup copy in the ISO format of the games you own. In this study we will not go into this.
Launch Xenia, then simply click on file -> Open menu to download games. You must navigate to the index where you have it.
Unlike other emulators, Xenia does not store your digital game library, but after opening an ISO image of one of them, it loads and operates quickly. In other words, after hitting File -> Open and upload ISO, the game will start immediately.
Note: Xenia is improving and not compatible with all Xbox 360 games. If the game doesn’t work, hangs or gives you obvious problems, it’s a good idea to try another theme. You can also try testing the beta versions of the emulator, called Canary, which you can find on Github.
What to keep in mind when using Xenia on a PC?
In addition to what we have already said about the need to have a xinput compatible controller, you should be aware that Xenia does not offer options that can improve compliance as does the PS3’s RPCS3. When you open your Documents folder in Windows you will find a configuration file in the subdirectory «Xenia», and even if you can change some parameters here, none of them will create a game that gives you problems to start working properly all of a sudden.
Also note that some of the options that do not normally appear on the Xbox 360 dashboard (console) will now appear using their own windows in Xenia. For example, if you are in the game when you click to save a game, a Xenia window will appear instead of the game option. Unlike when doing this in console, here you will have to use the keyboard and mouse to change the appropriate options.
And this is the only thing you need to be able to play Xbox 360 games on PC using Xenia. It is expected that future types of emulator will improve game compatibility and introduce a better way to display menus to appear within the game and not with separate Xenia windows. Each new version always brings new settings and great compatibility, so if the game doesn’t work for you in the current version, when a new version is released it will always be worth a try again.
