Xanite promises native Xbox gaming on Android, but debuts as nothing but a hollow shell

The game emulation scene on Android is seeing some decent progress, with emulators like Winlator and PCSX-UI-Android taking things to the next level. Now, Xanite has launched with the claim to introduce native Xbox gaming on mobile, and the devs regard it as a "next-gen" emulator for mobile.

At the core, the app promises to run the classic Xbox and Xbox 360 games on smartphones. The emulator for Android is also claimed to be capable of auto-detecting the hardware it's running on and making optimizations to offer the best possible emulation performance (AYN Odin 2 curr. $379.04 on Amazon).

For users with low-end phones, there's supposedly a performance scaling option, allowing the resolution and other aspects to be manually scaled down. While all these sound great, the emulator, at its current stage, is nothing but an empty shell. That is, per users who have dug into the app, there's no emulation code, and it's just an Xbox-themed UI with no functionality.

Another thing to note is that the first APK released, V0.1, is not signed. That means the Xbox emulator for Android will not even install on most devices without tweaks. Moreover, according to the Reddit users who were able to install it, it doesn't work on phones with Android 15 or Android 14.

There also appears to be inclusion of copyright-protected assets, such as the BIOS of the Xbox. Including these, especially in an emulator app, doesn't usually bode well, as it's a significant legal liability.

For what it's worth, at the current state, Android gamers are better off trying to run Xemu, a better-known Xbox emulator for Windows, on Winlator. The performance won't be as good as one might hope to be, but it will still be able to get games running, which Xanite seems to be incapable of doing now.