X1 Box App Brings Classic Xbox Games To Android, But There's A Caveat

Xbox emulation is now available on Android, albeit in a limited and somewhat controversial form. The app is called X1 Box and it is available in Google's Play Store for $7.99, as of this writing. Eagle-eyed users, however, have noticed that X1 Box is a fork of the free, open-source Xemu emulator, and the developer has already posted the source code for X1 Box on Github. The Xemu team is actually in the process of working on its own dedicated Android fork and app release as well, and yet another developer went ahead and made an APK of X1 Box available too, for users with the ability to side-load apps on their devices. All of that is to say, don't pay for X1 Box.

To understand how and why situations like this happen, it's important to clarify the nature of the FOSS (free and open source software) movement. The basic pillar of FOSS is that not only is software developed and released for free, but that its source code is open and made publicly available for easier collaboration, iteration, and improvement. X1 Box making its own fork isn't particularly controversial, but attempting to charge for it without benefitting the original Xemu developers is.


The most thorough look we've yet seen at X1 Box's setup and performance across various devices is from YouTuber Retro Game Corps. Sadly, his testing shows that even if there weren't controversy around this particular project, it's really not ready for prime time. While many games run and their graphics looks mostly correct, performance is unstable and often capped to 30 FPS in order to remain playable at all. The lower FPS cap also seems to slow down some game logic and animations, which obviously detracts from the gameplay. Modern Xbox consoles' backward compatibility is far-and-away a better way to play original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles than X1 Box.

But this first step is still worth noting, and we're sure that a stable release from the proper Xemu team will get us closer to high-quality Xbox-on-Android emulation. Otherwise, it's back to custom or retail Xbox handhelds.

Image Credit: Retro Game Corps on YouTube