Nintendo Switch Modder Gets Halo: Combat Evolved to Run Natively

It's an interesting time for console modding: less than two weeks after Steam was made to run on Nintendo Switch, working ports of Halo: Combat Evolved and the original Xbox dashboard have also made their way to Nintendo's humble NVIDIA Tegra X1-based handheld. This is thanks to advancements made in ARM64 Linux development for Switch, enabling the handheld to be used as a fully-fledged Linux PC. Per @Generalkidd on X/Twitter, though, the in-game performance for Halo: Combat Evolved isn't all that great, seemingly since the Xemu Xbox emulator on Switch is forced to rely on OpenGL. The faster Vulkan standard only crashes Xemu, sadly.

Got Halo CE running on the Nintendo Switch without cloud streaming too! pic.twitter.com/C8gO5ieIFJ

— Generalkidd 🔜 DH Atlanta (@Generalkidd) April 28, 2026

Even so, it's still an impressive feat. Should Xemu development overcome the Vulkan hurdle on Switch, chances are that Xbox titles like Halo: Combat Evolved should run quite well on the handheld. Other Switch 1 emulation milestones, including full playability for Wii and GameCube titles (otherwise limited to Nintendo Switch 2) also bode well for the long-term outlook on modded gaming experiences like these.


Arguably, though, the most interesting part of all this isn't even the Halo port. Rather, it's TeamUIX's work on a reverse-engineered Xbox dashboard engine port. The ported Xbox dashboard isn't exclusive to Nintendo Switch or Linux. It's actually fully cross-platform and could likely be run on your existing laptop or desktop right now, since UIX Desktop has broad support across Linux, MacOS, and Windows. You can download it if you want to try it out for yourself, and use it as a games launcher instead of Steam Big Picture or the Windows FSE if you want a more authentic experience on a handheld like the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X.