The Xbox Series X Can Now Play PlayStation 5 Games - Here's How

Certain PlayStation 5 games are now running on Xbox Series X hardware thanks to a new emulator developed by the modding community. While the latest PS5 games, like "Marvel's Wolverine," won't be running on Xbox anytime soon, there's been a surprising amount of progress made with PS5 emulation on PC — and that progress is slowly being transferred to emulation on Xbox.

The root of this project is KytyPS5, an open-source PlayStation 5 emulator for PC. A modder named Devran Cosmo Uenal built a special port of the emulator for Xbox Series X, calling this new version PS5X. It's not quite up to par with KytyPS5 on PC, but the results are already impressive.

Multiple PS5 games are somewhat playable on PS5X, complete with Xbox inputs and a fancy user interface to swap between titles. The experience isn't perfect by any means, but they're semi-playable with minor glitches and performance problems — a remarkable achievement for experimental emulation in such an early state.

Currently, only a handful of small PS5 games are playable on PS5X. Uenal's YouTube page features a PS5X library with "Gex Trilogy," "Hellboy: Web of Wyrd," "Marvel Cosmic Invasion," and "Quake 2.' Smaller games like these are typically the first to reach playable states with new emulators, but things can improve fast. Just look at Nintendo Switch emulation on Android, for example.

PS5X is still in a very early state, and the gameplay footage recorded by Uenal shows "Quake 2" running at an inconsistent framerate, bouncing between 20 and 40 FPS. It's impressive that the PS5 version of "Quake 2" is running on Xbox hardware at all, but PS5X still needs a lot of work if it's going to run big PS5 exclusives like "Demon's Souls" or "Ghost of Yotei."

Work seems to be progressing quickly on PS5X, however. A new user interface update posted by Uenal shows "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time," "Grand Theft Auto 5," and "Gran Turismo 7" as new additions to his library, indicating that these games are being tested. When PS5X releases publicly, you'll be able to install and test it yourself by putting your Xbox in developer mode. And don't worry — it's totally safe, and you won't brick your Xbox Series X by doing so.

PS5X is behind right now because KytyPS5 uses Vulkan rendering on PC, but the Xbox Series X doesn't support it. Everything has to be manually translated to DirectX to work on Xbox, which hurts compatibility and performance. If you're eager to test out PS5 emulation and you have a powerful gaming PC, you can check out KytyPS5 to get a sneak peek at some of the features and performance improvements that'll come to PS5X down the line. 

KytyPS5 has made significant breakthroughs in recent months, and progress shows no signs of slowing down. "Astro Bot" and "Demon's Souls" can both run without crashing, and while the framerate dips down into the single digits, this is still an impressive achievement for PS5 emulation. Since PS5X is a port of KytyPS5, these advancements will likely come to PS5X later on if work continues on the project.

PlayStation 5 emulation continues to grow at a rapid pace on PC, meaning big games like "Grand Theft Auto 5" might be the next titles to run on PS5X. "GTA 5" is surprisingly playable on KytyPS5 with high-end PC hardware, and Uenal had the game installed on PS5X in his user interface showcase video. It'll just take time to optimize things specifically for the Xbox port of the emulator.