[Hez]

As above, just curious. Haven't done too much research, but was curious on the subject.

EDIT: Made the question more clear, not emulators FOR them, but actual emulators that emulate the 360/ps3

This post has been edited by Hez: 15 November 2012 - 04:45 PM

[MathUser]

Well, the xbox 360 has a built in xbox emulator. The PS3 has a built in PS1 emulator.

[Aerosol]

No. The Wii hardware is very similar to Gamecube hardware, which is why any gamecube emulator might as well be a wii emulator too.

[Rika Chou]

Quote

Well, the xbox 360 has a built in xbox emulator. The PS3 has a built in PS1 emulator.

I think he's asking if there's emulators of PS3 or 360, not if there are emulators that run on them.

This post has been edited by Rika Chou: 15 November 2012 - 01:42 AM

[SoullessSentinel]

Although I'm pretty sure there's nothing playable yet, there is a PS3 Emulator in development hosted at Google Code here. I tested an early version and it couldn't run anything at that point, but now it can apparently run some simple homebrew. It's a little early for actual commercial games to be playable, though. To test a recent build you would have to compile from the source code, as the binary hasn't been updated for quite a while.

On the Xbox 360 front, there is a feasibility study of a potential Xbox 360 emulator hosted on a blog, here which I remember concluded that it should be possible on today's hardware if coded well enough. There is no release as of yet.

This post has been edited by SoullessSentinel: 15 November 2012 - 12:05 PM

[Hez]

Rika Chou, on 15 November 2012 - 01:42 AM, said:

Quote

Well, the xbox 360 has a built in xbox emulator. The PS3 has a built in PS1 emulator.

I think he's asking if there's emulators of PS3 or 360, not if there are emulators that run on them.

bingo.

[Aesculapius Piranha]

Given the cross-platform madness that has been this last console generation, I'm just going to give into my snarky side and give the following answer:

Yes, and it's called a PC.

[winterhell]

As for the first playable Xbox 360 games, my best bet would be the Indie Games, being made in .Net Compact Framework, usually being very light on the hardware and single threaded, and using HLSL. That being said, at the moment there are no public Xbox 360 emulators that show even splash screens.

[Black Squirrel]

PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 emulation have many online hoops to jump through, to the point where I actually doubt this stuff can be emulated fully. Individual games, maybe, but dashboards and networking and inevitably peripherals like Kinect - I wouldn't count on these things being emulated for a decade or more.

Emulation in general is driven by hardware and software being discontinued or starting to break due to age. We've not really reached that stage yet - the focus right now is (quite rightly) on older systems which desperately need the help.

[Aesculapius Piranha]

Black Squirrel, on 16 November 2012 - 01:03 PM, said:

Emulation in general is driven by hardware and software being discontinued or starting to break due to age. We've not really reached that stage yet - the focus right now is (quite rightly) on older systems which desperately need the help.

Is this a personal assessment or a widely held opinion? I'd like to know because my older paradigm has been that console emulation has been driven by hardware limitations. For days when console emulators were somewhat simpler to make, it seemed people just made them because they could. The entry level started to choke up because of hardware limitations around the PS/Saturn era, which seemed to continue with a couple Dreamcast projects I loosely followed. By what you are saying a decent PS3 emulator would actually be feasible but far too time consuming to program when there are older consoles that need time and effort, and it is less about hardware not being able to handle emulation at this stage.

[Tanks]

Man the original Xbox doesn't even have a proper emulator yet. It'll probably be years before anyone even tries taking a crack at a 360 one...

[LocalH]

I think it's funny that the original Xbox is the only last-gen console that doesn't have a proper emulator, and that the Wii is the only current-gen console that does :P

I wish there was a legit 3DS emulator. I'd honestly go buy NSMB2 just to be moral, but I don't care about the 3D gimmick and don't want to pay for the damn hardware :P

[Tanks]

LocalH, on 17 November 2012 - 02:39 AM, said:

I think it's funny that the original Xbox is the only last-gen console that doesn't have a proper emulator, and that the Wii is the only current-gen console that does :P

I wish there was a legit 3DS emulator. I'd honestly go buy NSMB2 just to be moral, but I don't care about the 3D gimmick and don't want to pay for the damn hardware :P

Have you played NSMBWii? Its the same game only without the coin gimmick. (I'm not shitting you they basically just copied a bunch of resources over and slapped a new label on it.)

[Black Squirrel]

Aesculapius Piranha, on 16 November 2012 - 04:42 PM, said:

Black Squirrel, on 16 November 2012 - 01:03 PM, said:

Emulation in general is driven by hardware and software being discontinued or starting to break due to age. We've not really reached that stage yet - the focus right now is (quite rightly) on older systems which desperately need the help.

Is this a personal assessment or a widely held opinion? I'd like to know because my older paradigm has been that console emulation has been driven by hardware limitations. For days when console emulators were somewhat simpler to make, it seemed people just made them because they could. The entry level started to choke up because of hardware limitations around the PS/Saturn era, which seemed to continue with a couple Dreamcast projects I loosely followed. By what you are saying a decent PS3 emulator would actually be feasible but far too time consuming to program when there are older consoles that need time and effort, and it is less about hardware not being able to handle emulation at this stage.

I would imagine an Xbox 360 emulator is totally doable today. PS3 would be slightly trickier but not by leaps and bounds. I wouldn't want to speak on behalf of actual emulator developers, but consoles and computers feel very similar these days, which wasn't the case ten or fifteen years ago - stuff is more widely documented, and ideas and achitecture is noticably similar. An Xbox 360 is effectively a bespoke PC - the X comes from DirectX, and of course, it's Microsoft pioneering Windows too. For the two to be radically different (like, say a NES and PC) just doesn't make sense to me.

From what I understand, the big problem is overcoming anti-piracy measures. It'll be slowing down the dumping of games, and the running of games. This seems to be the thing holding back a lot of systems in MAME for example (as well as a lack of interest from developers). If this wasn't an issue there's a good chance the emulators would still run too slow in 2012 to be of any use, but they'd still exist.


and my gut feeling is rather than sit down and deal with that noise, people would rather work on nicer systems. As time goes on and things go out of print (and development gets nicer, as it no doubt will), the 360/PS3 will be revisited, but for now, actually going out and playing real games on real consoles is still a credible idea.

This post has been edited by Black Squirrel: 17 November 2012 - 02:53 PM

[LocalH]

Tanks, on 17 November 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

Have you played NSMBWii? Its the same game only without the coin gimmick. (I'm not shitting you they basically just copied a bunch of resources over and slapped a new label on it.)

Yes, I have it on my PC, but I also want to play SM3DL which only exists on the 3DS :P

Black Squirrel, on 17 November 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

I would imagine an Xbox 360 emulator is totally doable today. PS3 would be slightly trickier but not by leaps and bounds. I wouldn't want to speak on behalf of actual emulator developers, but consoles and computers feel very similar these days, which wasn't the case ten or fifteen years ago - stuff is more widely documented, and ideas and achitecture is noticably similar. An Xbox 360 is effectively a bespoke PC - the X comes from DirectX, and of course, it's Microsoft pioneering Windows too. For the two to be radically different (like, say a NES and PC) just doesn't make sense to me.

From what I understand, the big problem is overcoming anti-piracy measures. It'll be slowing down the dumping of games, and the running of games. This seems to be the thing holding back a lot of systems in MAME for example (as well as a lack of interest from developers). If this wasn't an issue there's a good chance the emulators would still run too slow in 2012 to be of any use, but they'd still exist.


and my gut feeling is rather than sit down and deal with that noise, people would rather work on nicer systems. As time goes on and things go out of print (and development gets nicer, as it no doubt will), the 360/PS3 will be revisited, but for now, actually going out and playing real games on real consoles is still a credible idea.

A 360 or PS3 emulator would probably require a high-end machine, similar to PCSX2 and Dolphin a few years back. I have a pretty nice six-core machine with gobs of RAM and it struggles to run PCSX2 at a fluid 60fps outside of the Sony OSD, although it emulates the Wii just fine (which of course would be expected).

Not sure if it was due to programming practice or actual system capabilities but I know that the PS3 demo of the original Rock Band couldn't even keep a solid 60fps in single player while the 360 version never dropped a frame. I've always had the impression that the 360 was more powerful overall, although I could be wrong. Based on that, I'd actually expect to see a PS3 emulator first. It wouldn't surprise me if I was correct, as if you go back a generation, the original Xbox ran rings around the PS2 in sheer performance.

This post has been edited by LocalH: 17 November 2012 - 04:25 PM