A New Emulator for Xbox Renders PlayStation Games at 4K 60fps

Emulators have always been a bit of a mixed bag.

Countless gamers have wished to find out what playing console-exclusive titles on another platform would be like, but there aren’t too many (legal) emulators out there that deliver on that front. However, DuckStation may just change that.

DuckStation is a PS1 emulator that, according to VGN, focuses on  “playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.”

While it may not allow you to play PS4 mega-hits and new-gen PS5 titles on your Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One, the emulator will enable you to play classic PlayStation titles on your Microsoft console.

What’s more, DuckStation also brings a serious performance boost to those classic titles. If you have a high-end console like the Series X|S, the emulator will render titles at 4K 60fps, sometimes even higher. That’s a whopping 16x boost for PS1 games.

If you’d like to see the emulator in action, check out Modern Vintage Gamer’s demonstration below. The video showcases the emulator running PS classics like Final Fantasy 7, Ridge Racer, and Chrono Cross on the Xbox Series S.

It also provides an in-depth breakdown of the emulator’s settings and details how you can get the most out of old-school PS titles.

Along with the ability to upscale games to 4K, DuckStation on Xbox lets players turn on True Colour Rendering (which disables the dithering effect common to original PS hardware) and Texture Filtering (which smooths out the blockiness of textures on 3D objects when they are maximized).

DuckStation also fixes texture warping, which has always been a significant issue with PS games. While this takes up a lot of processing power, the Xbox Series S faces no problems.

Since many PS1 games do not run at 60fps, the emulator runs them at their default frame rates. But the emulator has an option that overrides the default frame rates, which, therefore, runs games at 60fps.

DuckStation is open source and is available to download for anyone with an Xbox Series X, Series S, or even an Xbox One. However, you will need to have developer mode enabled on your console.

While this isn’t a challenge in any respect, it is an extra step that some gamers might not be too comfortable undertaking.

About DuckStation

DuckStation is a simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation(TM) console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.

A “BIOS” ROM image is required to start the emulator and to play games. You can use an image from any hardware version or region, although mismatching game regions and BIOS regions may have compatibility issues. A ROM image is not provided with the emulator for legal reasons, you should dump this from your own console using Caetla or other means.