Xbox Series X Can Now Run PS5 Games Through PS5X Emulator, With Limits

PS5X Brings PS5 Emulation to Xbox Series X

Developer Devran Cosmo Uenal has gotten PlayStation 5 games running on an Xbox Series X through PS5X, his port of the open-source KytyPS5 emulator. In a YouTube video that went live on September 8, Uenal booted the PS5 version of Quake II on the console and played it with an Xbox controller, and he has since gotten three more PS5 titles working alongside it. He describes PS5X as a research project for running PS5 homebrew and game backups on a Series X in Developer Mode, and says it contains no PS5 firmware or decryption keys. There is no public download yet.

How the Emulator Works

Sony and Microsoft built their current consoles around closely matched AMD hardware, with eight Zen 2 CPU cores, RDNA 2 graphics and 16GB of GDDR6 memory in both machines, while PS5 games are compiled for the same x86-64 architecture PCs use. That lets KytyPS5 run game code directly on the host CPU instead of recreating PS5 hardware in software. Its developer calls it a compatibility layer that behaves more like a translator, converting PS5 game requests into something a PC can understand, translating graphics commands and recompiling shaders for Vulkan. Because Xbox Developer Mode supports only DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, Uenal has to translate everything to DirectX, and he admitted that AI was involved in the work. Fixes the KytyPS5 team makes for its PC renderer also have to be adapted before PS5X can use them.

What PS5X Can Run

At the time of writing, PS5X runs the PS5 versions of GEX Trilogy, Hellboy: Web of Wyrd, Marvel Cosmic Invasion and Quake II, all compatible with Xbox controller inputs. Some of them have working sound, and TweakTown reckons Quake II runs at roughly 25 to 45 frames per second in Uenal's footage. All four games are also sold on other platforms, so there is no sign yet of PS5X running a PS5 exclusive, and Uenal admits it is early days with limited compatibility. On PC, KytyPS5 is progressing faster: Android Authority reported on September 28 that it now goes in-game in a variety of PS5 titles, including one user showing Marvel's Wolverine reaching its main menu in slow motion on an NVIDIA RTX 5090, though that clip showed no gameplay.

The Memory Cap and Risks

The big limitation is that PS5X only works in Xbox Developer Mode, where Microsoft caps games at 5GB of memory and apps at 1GB. A retail Series X game gets 13.5GB of the console's 16GB, so PS5X has about 37 percent of the memory a normal Xbox game can use, ruling out most big current-gen releases. Microsoft only lifts the cap when software runs via the Visual Studio debugger, and the company blocked emulators in retail mode in 2023 under a store policy, reportedly handing out 15-day suspensions to players who found workarounds. There is no real workaround without a jailbreak, so PS5X is likely to remain a curio. The PS3 emulator team RPCS3 lists KytyPS5 and SharpEmu as the two active open-source PS5 emulators that can boot games and warns about scam sites posing as real ones, while scammers have also released malware under similar names like PCS5X.

Sources: Engadget