Original Xbox emulation might happen on the PC soon

I still remember buying the original Xbox when it came out, and spending hundreds of hours inside of the world of Halo. It was a system seller, and even games like Project Gotham Racing kept me entertained for months and months.

But now the Xbox is dead and buried, with the successor in the Xbox 360 being a phenomenal success - and then into the world of the Xbox One. Microsoft quickly released the Xbox One S with a 4K-capable Blu-ray player, and then just announced the 4K-capable Xbox One X console coming on November 7 for $499. However, Microsoft might have another trick up its sleeve in its dash for complete console domination: Xbox emulation for the PC.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer told PC Gamer: "I want people to be able to play games! [Emulation] is hard. [Xbox] 360 specifically is a PowerPC chip, emulated to x86, which is difficult. It's a little bit easier when you have a fixed spec, when you think about Xbox, Xbox One S, and Xbox One X. And you think of the variable specs of the PC space, so you're taking a fixed-spec PowerPC emulator and then moving it over to run on PC, so there's a lot of work there".

He continued: "The original Xbox, OG Xbox, is a little bit easier, because that was an x86 chip it was running on. Obviously when we think about UWP and the ability for games to run across console and PC, we're getting closer. I want developers to be able to build portable applications, which is why we've been focusing on UWP for games and even apps that want to run on multiple devices. So I think we've got work to go do there, but I think it's in our future".