Someone has gotten Nintendo Switch games running on an Xbox Series X. Footage of the experiment shows Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Metroid Prime Beyond all booting on Microsoft’s console, with no Switch in sight.
The emulator appears to be based on Eden, a community-built Switch emulator. It runs through Xbox Developer Mode, a setting that lets approved users install and test apps outside the locked-down retail environment.
That is the same route used by most homebrew and emulation projects on modern Xbox hardware, so the emulator is not something you can simply download from the console’s normal store.
It also follows a recent report of a PlayStation 5 emulator running on the same console, and that one needed Developer Mode too. The Series X is quietly becoming a favorite target for people who want to see what the hardware can do when it is allowed to run unofficial software.
How It Was Likely Built
Nobody has confirmed how this emulator was made. The leading guess is that it is a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) port of Eden.
UWP is the app framework Developer Mode supports, so adapting an existing Windows-based emulator to it would be a logical shortcut compared with writing something from scratch.
It is speculated that AI-assisted coding may have been involved, but there is no evidence for this. It is a guess about how quickly the project appeared, and the developers have not published anything that settles the question.
There is also another wrinkle. Separate open-source projects are working on Switch emulation for Xbox, with developers focused on graphics translation and performance.
A Switch emulator for Xbox was also discussed a few months ago and never materialized. None of these should be treated as the same thing as the emulator in the new footage, and results from one say nothing about the others.
Booting Is Not the Same As Playing
Getting a game to the title screen is a real milestone, but it is the easy part. The footage does not show consistent frame rates, and it does not show how the emulator handles the wider Switch library. It also says nothing about whether a game stays stable after an hour of play.
Emulator compatibility varies a lot from game to game. Demanding graphics features, shader handling, and odd hardware behavior can cause glitches, stutters, or outright crashes in one title while another runs fine.
Three games booting tells us the approach works in principle. It does not tell us that Mario can be played from the first level to the last.
The developers have not released the project publicly or published technical documentation, so there are no performance numbers, no compatibility list, and no explanation of the setup process or how game files get loaded. Anyone claiming to know how well it runs is guessing.
READ: Your PS5 Can Now Play PS2 Games, If You Jailbreak It First
How Legal Is This?
Emulation software is not illegal by default. What matters is where the game files and firmware come from. If you own your games and dump them legitimately, that is a very different situation from downloading pirated copies, and a Switch emulator on Xbox does nothing to change that.
The scene around emulation has plenty of piracy in it, which is why many people get cautious when the subject comes up.
Nintendo is also a company that has gone after emulator projects and game distribution aggressively in the past, so a project like this is likely to attract attention if it grows.
For now, this is an early demonstration and not something Xbox owners can use. The important question is no longer whether a Switch game can boot on a Series X, because that has been answered.
The real test is whether it can hold a steady frame rate, render graphics accurately, and run a meaningful share of the Nintendo Switch library without falling over.
