It appears that Microsoft’s next-gen consoles make for some fabulous emulation boxes. As demonstrated by a recent video from Modern Vintage Gamer, Xbox Series S owners have been using the system to run various PlayStation 2 games with the RetroArch emulator, which it seems to do splendidly.
This is made possible by the fact that the Xbox Series X|S includes a developer mode that allows users to run Universal Windows Platform apps (i.e., Windows Store apps). While RetroArch and other emulators have reportedly been banned from the Windows Store, the emulator can easily be found on the official RetroArch page.
Modern Vintage Gamer’s video shows off numerous classic PS2 games running on the Xbox Series S, such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Jak and Daxter, Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, God of War, and Gran Turismo 4. Thanks to the console’s relatively beefy hardware, most of them appear to run without a hitch.
Eurogamer pointed out in its coverage that RetroArch still suffers from some issues (e.g., files being capped in size, which limits the number of supported titles, as well as general graphics/sound glitches in certain games), but the emulation makes for a fantastic, albeit unofficial, extension to the Xbox’s native library.
RetroArch also happens to support a ton of platforms in addition to the PS2 (e.g., PS Vita, PSP, NES, N64, Wii, Genesis, Atari 2600), so we should expect to see many more emulation showcases on the Xbox Series X|S in the days ahead.
Ironically, there is no native backward compatibility for PS1, PS2, or PS3 games on the PlayStation 5.