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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Xbox Emulator Plays Retail Game 379

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-fun-is-emulation dept.
Ryan M. Pamplin writes "The critically acclaimed Xbox Emulator, CXBX, has made its way into Xbox history. Caustik has announced that "Turok Evolution" is now playable at real-time speed with comparable graphics to the Xbox while utilizing nearly the same graphics hardware found within the Xbox itself. The development of CXBX will continue to advance at rapid pace. Expect many additional titles to become playable upon the release of the next binary in the near future. A DivX video, binary, and GPL'ed source is available at the website."
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Xbox Emulator Plays Retail Game More

Xbox Emulator Plays Retail Game

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  • Oh boy.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by ebob9 ( 726509 ) * on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:39PM (#8806367)
    From the site: "I have put up some google ad links above to generate some support. The last sizeable donation has gone towards a development box for Sop Skrutt, and in the future it will help reimburse Xbox-Scene.com who is kind enough to host us (including the above rather large and expensive to host AVI file)." My condolences on your host's soon-to-be-slashdoted-to-hell server.

  • Piracy concerns (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:40PM (#8806371) Journal

    With the games possibly (depending on how good the emulator gets..) now having a far wider audience, there'll be a far larger demand for P2P downloads. I wonder if the MS anti-piracy protection will be up to the job - it certainly seems pretty simple to run games on 'modded' xboxes - I wonder if they've been depending on the fact that the games are designed for the console only to protect them from rampant copying...

    And I bet that new releases will have to pass an internal 'breaks the emulator' test before they're let out into the wild (it'll only mean the emulator has to cope with the differences, of course...)

    Simon.
    • While Piracy IS a negative side effect of all this, there is no reason why it has to be all about piracy.

      There are plenty of people who would just LOVE to play XBox games on their PCs.

      If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.

      Legally, though, I'm sure Microsoft would differe in opinion, but if it were to actually increase games sales I don't know how they could really have too much to complain about.

      • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Mike Hawk ( 687615 )
        If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.

        Sure enough. But does this emulator magically make your DVD-ROM or, even more likely, CD-ROM able to read a retail Xbox game disc? (I don't know, I can't RTFA because visiting such a site is discouraged here at work) Cause if not, it has no use other than to play ROMs and NOT retail games. And if you don't have an Xbox you don't have a legal way to make your

    • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lazuli42 ( 219080 )
      I thought I remembered Microsoft having plans to make streamed games available via XBox Live. Also, Yahoo has some type of games service where you can download and 'rent' the game.

      If the future of video games is streaming then piracy of this sort will only be a temporary problem. When you get your games on demand things will change significantly.

      In fact, you could almost still have an install disk with 99% of the game's resources on it and only stream watermarked and timestamped libraries once the game ge
    • It'll just take a few hours before a patch is released for something like that.

      *Nothing* is invulnerable. Sony thought DNAS (Dynamic Network Authentication System that checks games prior to going online to see if they're copies and/or the system has been modded) was invulnerable, but that's been cracked.

      These companies need to face it: you can spend all the money you want on trying to prevent people from copying games/modding their systems, but there is always, and will always be, a way around it. Alo

    • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MikeXpop ( 614167 ) <mike AT redcrowbar DOT com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:58PM (#8806643) Journal
      Let me put it simply. Here are some facts.

      Microsoft takes a loss on each Xbox sold.
      MS does this hoping the profit from games will overcome loss on hardware.
      This emulator allows people to run Xbox games without buying an Xbox.

      MS can only benefit from this. The only reason I'd see to defend against it is if Microsoft didn't want people playing them on PCs and instead on consoles. But that's kind of a dumb reason.

      • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:4, Insightful)

        by hawkbug ( 94280 ) <psxNO@SPAMfimble.com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:04PM (#8806705) Homepage
        You're forgetting one important thing M$ would lose on: revenue from games because they can now be pirated and played... without a modchipped console. People can just copy them from a friend and play them on a computer that contains no piracy check. Expect M$ to come down on this product like a 10 ton sledge hammer.... I'm not saying it's right, but that's what they will do.

        • Just a few thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bogie ( 31020 )
          Yes but Piracy is also what got Microsoft where it is today. How many pirated copies of Win95/98/2000, Office 95/97/2000 are out there? Casual piracy is a huge part of the way Microsoft got to its monopoly position.

          For the near term more people playing Xbox games will only lead to greater mindshare for Microsoft. Xbox 2 comes out and you have a whole other market of "Xbox gamers" who never bought the first gen console but are now hooked on Xbox games and might consider buying Xbox2 even thought they never

        • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 77Punker ( 673758 )
          Don't forget that buying the XBox actually helps them recover some of the loss they took by building the console.

        • Re:Piracy concerns (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

          You're forgetting one important thing M$ would lose on: revenue from games because they can now be pirated and played... without a modchipped console. People can just copy them from a friend and play them on a computer that contains no piracy check.

          There's another thing, too. Microsoft depends on the XBox sales numbers to be somewhat reliable, so they can use those numbers to convince software developers to commit to creating new games for the XBox. It's a tricky thing. If you have people who aren't

        • You're forgetting a more important thing (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @06:36PM (#8809617) Homepage
          Platform lock-in.

          If someone were to be able to play XBox games without owning an XBox, they are statistically less likely to actually buy said games. Because they haven't invested any money into the platform, they don't have that sense of loyalty / hazing that comes with a system purchase.

          (warning, old numbers ahead) The average system sells with 5 games the first year, and 5 the second... After which it slopes off. What is likely to happen if people don't make an investment in hardware? Chances are, more people will use the opportunity to buy that one "must have" game (in my case, Ninja Gaiden), but will not pick up the other 4 per year. The "system seller" is a well-known effect, but what happens if people can satisfy that system seller desire without the system? Or what happens when people can emulate all 3 platforms consistently?

          You want your players to make an investment in your hardware. It makes them better customers, more likely to come back and buy more games.

    • by definition all games ran on that emu are copied. ..so the 'protection' if you could even say that one existed is broken.

  • And surely... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:41PM (#8806400) Homepage
    MS is going to pull the DMCA on this as soon as we get done with their server.

    Talk about misery loving company.
    • it is open source [sourceforge.net] and on sf... so even if it's dmca'd to oblivion, maybe they'll take development out of the country ;)

      although dmca did effectively kill the warforge bnetd project, so who knows.

      -fren
    • "MS is going to pull the DMCA on this as soon as we get done with their server."

      404

      Seems we're done.

    • Why would they do that? They make more money when you buy games for your PC without buying an Xbox than if you do buy an Xbox, because they lose money on each Xbox sold. Also, you can use Xbox controllers on the PC, and they are higher quality than the knockoffs; Peripheral sales probably pay M$ just as much as selling games, and now they can sell them for PC users. It's a winning situation for them.

    • Re:And surely... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:07PM (#8806750) Journal
      On what grounds will Microsoft pull out the DMCA? It may be a law with several evil clauses (and a couple of good ones, like the safe harbor provisions), but it's not an all-purpose beating stick.

      I don't see how this can be construed as a mechanism to defeat copyright protection, and emulators are well established as legal; it's just the legality of actually having any ROM data to run the emulators on is occasionally questioned. (For the record, I think if you own a license to a copyrighted work you should have full rights to put it in whatever media format you like, as long as it is undistributed, but to be fair, the legal precendents are mixed at best.)

      • Re:And surely... (Score:5, Funny)

        by M.C. Hampster ( 541262 ) <M...C...TheHampster@@@gmail...com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:12PM (#8806800) Journal

        On what grounds will Microsoft pull out the DMCA?

        On the grounds that the original poster wanted some karma.

      • Emulating the Xbox consists of basically nothing other than defeating DRM. The machine itself is already just a standard, albeit crippled, PC.
      • On what grounds will Microsoft pull out the DMCA? It may be a law with several evil clauses (and a couple of good ones, like the safe harbor provisions), but it's not an all-purpose beating stick.

        They've already been using the DMCA to kill modchip imports and websites... if the emulator lets one run pirated games the same as a modchip does, then I don't see why they wouldn't try to use it.

        If the emulator developer is smart he'll make sure he's copy-protection compliant with the emulator; that is, he chec

  • Microsoft's gonna be mad! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Throtex ( 708974 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:43PM (#8806412)
    Now you can play XBox games on a Windows machine! Think of all the lost revenue!

  • Maybe Later (Score:5, Informative)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) * on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:44PM (#8806425) Journal
    I can buy a Xbox for a 150 bukcs. Ill look at it when it becomes V1.0 Stable but for now Ill play the games faster than an emulator and save myself 151 dollars in time.

  • It would be cool if it did (Score:5, Interesting)

    by daveodukeo ( 260037 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:44PM (#8806426)
    Run on the xbox itself.... it could serve as a nice piece of game backup software - you could back up your games and play with the back up copy using the emulator on your box!
    • Surely I must be missing something here. Most games will already run from a backup on your Xbox, and the Xbox has to be hacked to run any unsigned code, which would include the emulator.

      The closest useful thing I can think of to what you describe is the GB/GBC emulators for GBA, which give you functionality not found in the GBA's backwards compatibility, like state saving, cheats, screen shots, et cetera.

  • MEANWHILE, AT MICROSOFT... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:45PM (#8806454) Homepage
    Underling: Sir, there's a situation. I have good news and bad news.

    Bill Gates: Alright, let me hear it.

    Underling: The bad news is, someone has created an XBox emulator capable of playing a commercial game, and the public has become aware of it.

    Bill Gates: Oh no! That's horrible! This could undermine H&E's entire business model! What's the good news?

    Underling: The game is Turok Evolution.

    Bill Gates: *Whew*

  • Good work but not quite Mame (Score:5, Informative)

    by ifreakshow ( 613584 ) * on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:45PM (#8806458)
    This is really great work but there's much more to be done before this is an All Purpose Xbox emulator. Currently, It only plays Turok. Which is based on the 4627 XDK. Other games based on this are:

    Aggressive Inline
    Battle Engine Aquila
    EggMania
    Kelly SLater's Pro Surfer
    Rayman Arena
    Sega GT 2002
    Shadow of memories
    • additional notable points are that it is also missing sound and network support.

      also, maybe it will be slightly since xbox is based on x86 architecture and nvidia graphics, but it took a while for ultrahle, for example, to be truly playable (the o/c'ed celeron 450s didn't exactly cut it back then -- or it would play fine 90% of the time but glitch annoyingly the other 10%.. or buttons would have no text, etc.). so the requisite hardware might be a year or two off before it's truly playable (not to mention the incredible amount of effort to fully reverse engineer the xbox architecture enough to emulate it in software such that it plays indistinguishably from a real xbox)

      -fren

      • XBox Architecture? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Inhibit ( 105449 )
        You mean reverse engineer Pentium 4 and GeForce support... wait a minute.. that doesn't sound right :).

        It's actually running (as you stated) X86 architecture hardware, so reverse engineering a compatability layer for the hardware is, erm, not really an issue. Unless you're using a Power5 chip, I suppose.

  • Halo (Score:5, Funny)

    by tx_mgm ( 82188 ) <notquiteoriginal@gm a i l .com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:45PM (#8806460)
    So...when they get Halo to run on this thing, which one will run better: the PC version or the emulated X-Box version? I only say this because the current PC release runs like it's emulated already.
    • Well, I read the article (I know, i'm a little odd like that sometimes :) ) and saw a line which said:

      I am sure by now most of you have heard of the new xbox emulator just released, named "Xeon". From the screenshots I have seen, it is very impressive. Halo is apparently playable, although I have not been able to verify this myself.

      Look, I even did the Google [google.com] for you.

    • Re:Halo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      actually I'm waiting for it..

      because the fuckers left coop out of the pc version.

    • Xeon (Score:5, Informative)

      by emkman ( 467368 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:52PM (#8807439)
      The other xbox emulator in the works, Xeon, can already play Halo to a large degree. Check it out [emulator-zone.com]

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by GMFTatsujin ( 239569 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:46PM (#8806476) Homepage
    Does it emulate the Goldeneye memory card hack? I really want to install Linux on it...

  • Patents are bad for Emulation! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elektroschock ( 659467 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:50PM (#8806516)
    Don't forget that parts of the XBOx are protected by trivial patents of Microsoft.

    See:

    Microsoft and Patents
    http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/i ndex.en.h tml

    Bruxelles event
    http://dot.kde.org/1081152462/

    Web strike and demo
    http://demo.ffii.org

  • Modchips (Score:4, Funny)

    by trs998 ( 696344 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:51PM (#8806534) Homepage Journal
    Do I now have to plug in a modchip emulator?

  • Unlikely (Score:5, Funny)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:52PM (#8806546) Homepage Journal
    "Expect many additional titles to become playable upon the release of the next binary in the near future."

    What I expect is the Microsoft legal team serving them with papers before the next binary release.

  • The Cycle is complete! MWAHAHAHA! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:55PM (#8806591)
    Now that I have finished turning my Xbox into a PC I can turn my PC into a Xbox! Hooray!

  • Lemme get this straight. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:58PM (#8806632)
    I'll need a $2000 computer to play a game that almost looks as good as the one played on the $150 console?

    I think I'll stick with the real thing.
    • I'll need a $2000 computer

      Why that price? I think the emulator assumes you already own a powerful enough computer. The combined street value of used parts that will work should be less than that of an XBox.

      A system with a PIII chip, motherboard, 10 GB drive, ethernet card, GeForce 4 card has to be about $100 or so.
      • Do you actually know what emulation is?

        Just because the Xbox contains the specs (kinda) you listed above, you can't do a straight conversion onto emulation performance. When you emulate something, there is an overhead - likely to be small in the case of an Xbox due to the similar architecture but still... - so you always need more power than the original system you are trying to emulate. The Playstation has a 32 bit processor runnning at 33.87mhz and 2MB onboard RAM. Let's see you emulate the Playstat

  • Google Cache (Score:4, Informative)

    by OctaneZ ( 73357 ) <ben-slashdot2 @ u m a . l i t e c h.org> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @02:58PM (#8806638) Journal
    No, it's not up to date [216.239.39.104] but it's better than nothing [caustik.com].

  • Er. (Score:2, Funny)

    by pokeyburro ( 472024 )
    I'm not sure I want to play on something whose name looks like "cocks box".

  • Re: Piracy concerns (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mwronski ( 674652 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:04PM (#8806709)
    ...I wonder if they've been depending on the fact that the games are designed for the console only to protect them from rampant copying...

    I am sure this is the exact reason. There are multiple layers of copy protection on the XBOX now, DVD Format unreadable, MS Signed executables, etc.

    If M$ could have that kind of protection on standard PC hardware they would have released their own emu and sell games to PC and XBOX owners at a huge cost savings.

  • I just don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pmancini ( 20121 ) <pmancini AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:05PM (#8806721) Homepage
    an Xbox is, what, $150??? How much is your time worth? I mean really, working on this kind of project seems to me to be a serious misallocation of resources.

    Unless...

    -- You can make the games play better
    -- Do things you can't normally do with an XBox that are interesting and fun
    -- Improve the development of XBox titles
    -- Port other cool games to XBox more easily
    • or i can get the games for free on a p2p and my current pc will play them. that means im not out the $150 (honestly, if i werent married and both of us in kolledge, id have one already). im sure other games will be MUCH easier to port now that one is done
    • Famous quote (which of course doesn't apply as much as it used to) :

      "Linux is only free if you don't value your time"
    • The whole point of OSS development is that it has no need to be led by Market economics.

      I'm not a developer, but I respect their ability and it must be a tremendous goodwill moment when the executable you hand-crafted runs properly for the first time.

      Would you deny the authors that satisfaction just because their choices are economically unsound?

      Also - why shouldn't someone who already owns the expensive PC want to try an XboX game without spending the price of a console?

    • Re:I just don't get it... (Score:5, Funny)

      by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:40PM (#8807241)
      I mean really, working on this kind of project seems to me to be a serious misallocation of resources.

      From: Central Bureaucracy
      To: Unit #926568257191
      Re: X-Box Emulator

      Thank you for bringing to our attention this serious misallocation of resources. These units will be re-programmed to begin production on work more suited to fulfilling this year's 5-year plan. Unit #000000000001 is pleased to know all comrades are looking out for the good of the Party.

      Sincerely,

      Central Bureaucracy
  • I just don't see this as having as much of an impact that UltraHLE had. The average person does not know where to download Xbox ROMS, let alone have the patience to wait for the 3+ gigs to download.

  • XBOX Live? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 4/3PI*R^3 ( 102276 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @03:14PM (#8806826)
    If I mod my xbox emulator to run Linux and then connect my xbox emulator to XBOX Live will Microsoft intall an update [zdnet.co.uk]that disables my xbox emulator?
  • I am wondering why anyone would want to do this aside from the pure hacking coolness that this is.

    I thought the X-boxes were sold at a loss, and that is in relation to the fact that MS already gets the hardware cheaper than we can due to their immense purchasing power. Can you really build a comparable box for $150 or even close to that? Seems to me that is better to take an x-box and mod it to a fully functioning computer (like linux) rather than take a fully functioning computer and mod it to an x-box
  • I wonder how long it will be before you can emulate the emulator that is emulating the XBox, via WINE.

    It would be quite funny to see the XBox games running on a Linux box, faster even than with Windows. ;)
  • I hope the editors did a bit of research on this one before having a repeat of a couple years ago [slashdot.org]
  • What a conundrum: getting excited over Turok! Anyway, would anyone care to bet how long until we see a "We received a notice from Microsoft's lawyers today" followed very quickly with a "This Project Discontinued" page on Caustik's site?
  • my PC's been able to run MythTV twice as well as my XBox for a year.

  • This is *not* good for Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Beanalby ( 685905 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @04:51PM (#8808336)
    People keep saying, "this is good for Microsoft because they lose money on hardware and make money on software, so pure software is good for them!"

    In the pre-XBox days, Microsoft had a software games divison. They were already producing software. By that logic, they'd have no reason to make a console, because people always lose money on console hardware. Why didn't htey just stick with games for PCs?

    They did it for "living room presence." Right now, or at least moreso 3 years ago, people thought of computers as a workstation. Microsoft's wants to push computers to all areas of the home, and the XBox in the living room is their foot in the door. By establishing a foothold in the console division, they'll be able to have future hardware generations integrate better with with normal PCs to give "ubiquituous computing" or some such.

    Microsoft *could* make an XBox emulator on the PC, but they just don't want to.

  • Latest version (Score:4, Informative)

    by Aphelion ( 13231 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @04:52PM (#8808352) Homepage
    The latest version [caustik.com] is not linked on the downloads page.

  • Can it run Linux? (Score:3, Funny)

    by EDA Wizard ( 2225 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @06:31PM (#8809560)
    I can't wait to try this out. If I could run Linux on this emulator it would give me a way to put Linux on my x86 box.. Oh wait... That's right...

  • It doesn't work on my game :( (Score:3, Redundant)

    by AndrewHowe ( 60826 ) on Thursday April 08, 2004 @06:40PM (#8809664)
    As an Xbox developer, I thought this was interesting. I pointed it at my .xbe... And it did nothing. I'm a little drunk right now, so I'm not up for debugging it. It just pauses straight away. :(

  • "Nearly the same" graphics hardware? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Trejkaz ( 615352 ) on Friday April 09, 2004 @04:21AM (#8813312) Homepage

    And then the real article says it was a 2.8GHz P4 with a GeForce FX5600.

    The Xbox is hardly a 2.8GHz P4, guys.

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