Changes

The Xbox is infamous in the emulation scene for being the worst case of false advertising. For the projects currently available and active, there's a high barrier to entry for the effort involved, and it's the same reason why consoles using off-the-shelf hardware (or reused hardware) are easier to emulate. To users, being "basically a PC" and "x86-based" is a selling point despite that not being the case, as the Xbox has a number of proprietary elements that are nothing like standard PC hardware (like the eighth-gen "x86-based" consoles). Many aspects of the Xbox's architecture aren't openly documented, making it a major pain to figure out.<ref name="ngemu">{{cite web|url=http://ngemu.com/threads/why-is-xbox-emulation-premature.132032/|title=Why is XBOX emulation premature?|publisher=ngemu|accessdate=2017-05-22|date=2010-02-15}}</ref><ref name="Microsoft1">{{cite web|url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xbf3tbeh(v=vs.140).aspx|title=/LTCG (Link-time Code Generation)|publisher=Microsoft|accessdate=2017-05-22}}</ref><ref name="Microsoft2">{{cite web|url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb985904.aspx|title=Under The Hood: Link-time Code Generation|publisher=Microsoft|accessdate=2017-05-22}}</ref><ref name="FrameRater">{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97mQcus7wFI|title=Xbox Emulation: The History & Roadblocks | A Documentary by FrameRater|publisher=Youtube|accessdate=2018-03-13|date=2018-03-08}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/6dl94y/why_is_there_a_lack_of_original_xbox_emulation/|title=Why is there a lack of Original Xbox emulation?|publisher=Reddit|accessdate=2017-06-11|date=2017-05-29}}</ref> For example, the APU, ; one of two sound processors on the [http://xboxdevwiki.net/MCPX MCPX southbridge chip] of the Xbox chipset, is [https://github.com/JayFoxRox/xqemu-espes/pull/24 incredibly powerful and uses complex processing steps] that are difficult to figure out using clean-room reverse engineering.

The good news is the efforts currently underway are starting to see real effects. While it's true that Cxbx-Reloaded will have the performance advantage with a primarily HLE-based approach on Windows, xemu will have the advantage of going by the book. xemu also has the potential to tap into hardware acceleration that Cxbx-Reloaded would have to write a kernel mode driver for, and SoullessSentinel wrote: "''I don't think our users would like the idea of disabling security features such as driver signature enforcement and installing an untrusted kernel driver just for an emulator.''"<ref name=accel>[https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/6a958p/cxbx_reloaded_xbox_emulator_panzer_dragoon_orta/dhetzrd/ Cxbx-Reloaded (Xbox Emulator) - Panzer Dragoon Orta (In-Game)]. Reddit (2017-05-10).</ref>