The best Original Xbox Box Mini device would actually just be a Xbox One S (or X)

[Mr Puggsly]

Pemalite said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Not quite, to make the Gamecube, Wii and PS2 emulators to work well you need a pretty good or modern CPU. Essentially the same CPU power to make modern games run well. Not what I consider a toaster. To boost the resolution and other settings it requires even more power.

But it wouldn't be emulating the Gamecube or Wii with it's PowerPC instruction set, It wouldn't be emulating the Playstation 2 with it's MIPS instruction set either... Making your argument rather superfluous.

There is significantly less overhead as the instructions being translated from the Original machine to the newer machine is 1:1 as both are x86. - In-fact there should be minimal need for emulation itself anyway, maybe a higher reliance on repackaging/abstraction/virtualization and other techniques though. - Which is how Microsoft achieves what it does with Xbox 360 emulation on the poor Jaguar CPU's.

With that said... Emulating Gamecube, Wii or the Playstation 2 isn't very CPU demanding anymore, even AMD's cheapest dual-core CPU's can handle it fine these days.

Mr Puggsly said:

Also, if they use different hardware that means they have to port the existing emulator or create a new one.

No. It doesn't mean that at all.
They are using the same hardware architecture, they can still use the same software.
Remember... The Xbox One actually runs multiple Operating Systems, cut a few of those out... And only keep what is required for Emulation and you can decrease CPU and DRAM usage.

But they don't even have to do that. 2GB of Ram free is more than enough memory to emulate Original Xbox games.

Mr Puggsly said:

With all that taken into consideration, it makes sense to use existing hardware (Xbox One S) which plays OG Xbox games very well already with improved visuals.

Waste of money though.
I get what you are saying... But the Xbox One S already does everything you describe... And people aren't flocking to it like they did with the NES or SNES Classic and buying it in droves for that sole reason as far as I know.

Cost is a massive factor, regardless of extra value incentive extras.

Mr Puggsly said:

Its more work to create new hardware that plays OG Xbox games just as well, create an online storel also a new device wouldn't have all the features X1 has.

It's not "new" hardware per-say. - They can harvest dud chips.

Mr Puggsly said:

The X1 is already doing what people want, so why move away from that to make an inferior device?

Price. - Doesn't mean the Xbox One goes away either.

I get your logic of the CPU architecture, if what you're suggesting was the case the X1 would get perfect performance in all OG Xbox BC games. But that's not the case, uncapped games still struggle to stay at 60 fps. So the emulation process is still very CPU intensive on the vastly superior CPU of X1 or even X1X. The X1X does get better performance and that's very likely from the extra CPU power.

You don't need an expensive CPU to emulate PS2, Gamecube, or Wii, but it does need to be a powerful or modern CPU to run all games well, especially if you want to improve visuals.

Hypothetically, they could just use the same Xbox One APU, maybe a couple GB of memory and 32-64GB of storage for the games. Adding wifi would only be for downloading games, adding a DVD drive is possible but would make it more expensive. I think in the end though you still get a device that will be at least $99 so little profit, vastly inferior overall, and wouldn't have online Halo. That's why I don't want to cater to the masses only willing to spend $99, it would be junk compared to a X1. Go get a SNES or PS1 mini if that's all you have to spend.

Fuck price, $199 isn't that bad and you get a much more capable product. If you just wanna play old Xbox games it does that and very well, but if you consider playing 7th gen and 8th gen content (maybe finish the fight with Halo 3), it does that too. That's the great thing about the X1, its kinda like the best of all Xbox consoles in one machine. That becomes more true as the BC list grows.

Last edited by Mr Puggsly - on 29 December 2018