One of the most impressive USPs of the latest generation Xbox Series X|S was almost native support for most mainstream emulators. After a few minutes of initial setup, the Xbox Series X|S were capable of emulating a majority of consoles released in the past two decades.
Sadly that can all soon change as Microsoft is restricting users from running game emulations on the Xbox Series X | S.
gamr12 who’s involved with the popular Retroarch emulator encountered an error while trying to run an emulator on Xbox that stated,
“Unable to launch this game or app,” the message reads. “The game or app you’re trying to launch violates Microsoft Store policy and is not supported.”
Xbox’s QA team suggested that the action was being taken due to “legal issues with Nintendo.” However, later Microsoft talked to IGN and stated that,
“The information currently circulating on Twitter is not accurate,”
They further added,
“Our actions are based on a long-standing policy on content distributed to the Store to ensure alignment with our Microsoft Store Polices. Per 10.13.10, Products that emulate a game system or game platform are not allowed on any device family.”
However, Xbox consoles offer a dev mode option that can still allow users to side-load applications like emulators. It’s worth noting that, getting access to the dev mode costs $20, and every time you go back to playing native Xbox games there’s a bit of hassle.