Emulation General Wiki

Xenia

Revision as of 09:32, 11 May 2026 by Xianmo (talk | contribs) (→Xenia on Other Operating Systems: Remove explicit mention of Arm from Xenia-edge macOS builds, as they now have both x86 and Arm)
Xenia
Original developer(s) Ben Vanik (Initial work. Retired 2016.)
Current developer(s) DrChat (Also worked with B. Vanik), Rick Gibbed and Xenia community
Latest version v1.0.2844 [+]
Active Yes
Platform(s) Windows
Linux
Xbox One
Xbox Series X and Series S
Emulates Xbox 360
Website Xenia.jp
Support ($) Patreon
Patreon (gibbed)
GitHub Sponsor (gibbed)
GitHub Sponsor (JoelLinn)
GitHub Sponsor (Razzile)
Programmed in C++
License BSD-3-Clause
Source code GitHub
Issue tracker GitHub

Xenia is an experimental, free and open-source Xbox 360 emulator for Windows and Xbox One/Series and, to a lesser extent, other OSes (through compatibility layer).

Download

Main article: Xbox 360 emulators#Emulators

Overview

Xenia originally began development in early 2013 as a side project by Ben Vanik.[1] It was the first emulator to run a commercial Xbox 360 game, Frogger 2.[2] Up until 2018, progress continued steadily until the developers hit a roadblock in accurately emulating Xenos, the GPU of the Xbox 360.

For the next three years, an active contributor named Triang3l completely rewrote the GPU implementation with the primary goal of addressing this. Once implemented, it more than doubled performance.[3] Triang3l also built a different, faster and more accurate memory emulation, which should lead to fewer broken vertices and textures being seen in-game.

For proper handling of the GPU's capabilities, Xenia requires a specific feature of Direct3D 12 called Rasterizer-Ordered Views, which is available on most modern GPUs.[4] Xenia is capable of 3x3 upscaling, but such a feature is resource-intensive and can only be accomplished with high-end GPUs at the moment.

System requirements

Main article: Computer specifications#Recommended Specifications

Features

 
Some of Xenia's settings and game screenshots. View picture to enlarge.
  • Video Upscaling

Up to 3x, depending on the game. Accessible via the text config file.


  • Post-Processing

Including Nvidia FAA and/or AMD Fidelty FX resampling.


  • Controller Binding

Accessible via the text config file.


  • Individual Game Patching

A key feature of the Canary Fork only.

Configuration

Xenia Manager
 
Developer(s) Shazzaam and contributors
Release
Latest version 4.3.2 [+]
Active Yes
Platform(s) Windows, Linux (via Wine/Proton)
Type Xenia Frontend / Library Manager
Programmed in C#
Website xenia-manager.github.io
Support ($) Ko-fi
License BSD-3-Clause
Source code GitHub
Issue tracker GitHub

Most configuration options usually found in the GUI are instead found in the file xenia.config.toml (xenia-canary.config.toml for canary builds, xenia-canary-netplay.config.toml for canary-netplay builds). The file can be opened and edited with any text editor without having to change the file extension and can be found under the filepath "...\Users\User\Documents\Xenia" along with shader cache and per-game files when using windows (but you can make it portable if you place portable.txt in the same folder as xenia.exe, canary builds are portable by default). GPU options such as v-sync, resolution scale, and much more can be found in the xenia.config.toml file.

If you are trying to emulate Xbox Live Arcade titles, then the line "license_mask = 0" should be changed to "license_mask = 1". The demo mode and full game files for XBLA titles are actually identical, and this option allows the games to exit demo mode.

If you are experiencing various sound issues with specific titles try latest canary build and set in config: use_new_decoder true and use_dedicated_xma_thread false and also try changing apu_max_queued_frames from 64 to 16. It might be better or worse.[1]

For checking if your games work and any fixes, tweaks, or settings, see compatibility list.

For users who prefer a graphical interface over manually editing text files, Xenia Manager is a popular, unaffiliated third-party tool. It provides a dedicated frontend to manage game libraries, automatically download Canary updates, apply game patches, and adjust configuration settings per-game without needing to manually edit the `.toml` files.

Xenia on Other Operating Systems

For emulation on Linux/SteamOS/Steam Deck; Xenia Canary (and Xenia Edge) have linux builds from now on, otherwise you need to use proton experimental compatibility layer. Either way, you need to use Vulkan backend, it's heavily incomplete at the moment, see Xbox 360 emulation issues section for more information for Vulkan backend.

You can use vkd3d wrapper with D3D12 backend instead of using Vulkan backend; recently vkd3d had some improvements for xenia that can allow you to play with D3D12 backend and some working titles on linux-based operating systems. Keep in mind that if you are using proton experimental compatibility layer; vkd3d-proton wrapper already comes with it.

For emulation on macOS and iOS; Xenia-Edge is a bleeding-edge dev branch which has macOS builds. XeniOS is a fork of Xenia-Edge that focuses on iOS and macOS. Compatibility with both of these emulators is still fairly low, but is improving at a rapid pace.

For emulation on Android; While Android builds in CI, this doesn't mean there is anything you can install or "make work" on your device, it's just fragments of Xenia that are compiled into binaries and those aren't even the most complex parts of the emu, see Xenia Discord in the #dev-android channel under the 'Development' category for more information. See official Xenia wiki section for this.

Online play

Main article: Xbox network#Xbox 360
Main article: Xbox 360 emulators#System Link

References

  1. ↑ Ben Vanik's first commit. Jan 10, 2013.
  2. ↑   Xenia Xbox 360 Emulator: Frogger 2 first run
  3. ↑ Triang3l. Leaving No Pixel Behind: New Render Target Cache, 3x3 Resolution Scaling & Three Years in Xenia’s GPU Emulation.
  4. ↑ Margen67. FAQ. § What is ROV? "Using the Rasterizer-Ordered Views (ROV) feature of Direct3D 12 allows Xenia to overcome [slow performance and unfixable transparency issues] by doing blending and depth/stencil testing manually in pixel shaders, rendering directly to the 10 MB buffer. This allows for much higher performance since there's no expensive data copying and better accuracy because of no pixel format limitations. [...] However, this is a hardware feature, and thus on older graphics cards, Xenia is limited to the RT path."
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