Microsoft has shut down emulation of classic games on the Xbox Series X/S on April 6th and a small but passionate community of retro enthusiasts, keepers and homebrew developers is in turmoil. They’re urging the console maker to reverse course and make legal copying easy again, even if it means potentially angering rivals like Sony and Nintendo.
The Xbox Series X/S is unprecedented among consoles in allowing users to easily emulate older games. When it launched in 2020, new owners saw the opportunity Install emulators that could play classic PlayStation 2 and GameCube games on it. That’s still possible with the console’s paid access to Developer Mode, but Microsoft has now blocked that feature Standard retail mode. Where users could previously download and run emulators for dozens of legacy consoles, they are now greeted with an error code telling them that such programs violate Microsoft Store policies.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it was a good run” gamr13 tweetedwho helps with the distribution the Xbox retail version of the RetroArch emulator front end, which includes emulation cores for everything from the NES to the Wii. They said they had no choice now but to tag Xbox and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer with a #LetUsEmulate hashtag on Twitter.
Although emulation is often associated with piracy, it’s also a legal way to play copies of games you already own on newer hardware with modern conveniences.
In the earlier days of consoles, Xbox Series X/S owners could install various emulators and emulator frontends such as RetroArch, PPSPP, and DuckStation using links on gamr13’s Github page to download UWP (Universal Windows Platform ) to be installed via the consoles “Microsoft Store. But once the tech giant took notice, it became quicker and faster to remove emulation apps from the store.
“Essentially, Microsoft would take action against my uploads where they used to take months, weeks, or days to date,” gamr13 said my city. “So I just reuploaded the apps when they shut down to get newcomers and everyone up and running again.”
Xbox Series X/S was “like the Steam deck” for emulation
One way to make the emulators last longer in the Microsoft Store was to make them private and then “whitelist” specific users to be able to download them. A Patreon helped coordinate and fund this activity.
“The crackdown started towards the end of the summer into the fall where we dealt with daily shutdowns for a while so they were taken down the day after the ramp up,” gamr13 said. “We found a way to preserve them for up to three days by not naming them ‘RetroArch’ but instead naming them ‘RetroArch’ [using] randomized names.”
However, as long as you had already downloaded the emulators, you were fine. Until now. Some users shared stories on Twitter about losing access to collections of hundreds and hundreds of classic games that they were no longer able to play on Xbox Series X/S due to the change.
Running emulators in the consoles’ developer mode remains an option, but access to this feature requires a $20 fee and isn’t always available to owners in regions where online payment systems are more difficult to access. The timing of the crackdown also has many wondering why Microsoft decided to change its stance on the emulation community. Emulating games from other platforms has always technically been against the store’s terms of service, the homebrew developers say, but until now Xbox emulation enthusiasts have felt the company has been content to mostly look the other way.
The timing has sparked some speculation as to whether outside pressure could force Microsoft to become more aggressive. Nintendo has historically been extremely anti-emulation, and while a version of the Dolphin emulator for GameCube and Wii has been available on Xbox Series X/S for a while, there is a dedicated port specifically for the console just went into beta a few months ago
In a statement to my city, a Microsoft spokesman said: “We are continually evolving our mechanisms to review and take enforcement action on content distributed to the Store to ensure compliance with our Microsoft Store policies. As per 10/13/10, products emulating a gaming system or platform are not allowed on any device family.”
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s new level of policy enforcement appears to be leaving some Xbox owners who previously happily emulated their legacy games on Microsoft’s consoles out in the cold. Dev mode remains an option, but it adds another layer of complexity and doesn’t always play well with console updates released early by those signed up to the Microsoft Xbox Insider Preview program.
“[Emulation] was the only reason I and many others bought an Xbox,” said gamr13. “PlayStation and Nintendo platforms require some modifications to do stuff like this, but Xbox has been a really open and welcoming platform for everyone, be it indie developers, until now [or] gaming keeper. It was like the Steam Deck of consoles.”
Correction 4/6/2023 7:12pm ET: Clarification of gamr13’s role as distributor of the Xbox Series S/X RetroArch app.