The process for adding RetroArch to your Xbox using Developer Mode is a bit complicated. It’s worth mentioning that Microsoft doesn’t officially support this kind of emulation and PCSX2 support is still a work in progress, but the early results with RetroArch are exciting: despite the limits imposed by a cap on file sizes, PS2 games do run at almost the same quality as they did on the original console.

The new console is only natively backwards compatible with PlayStation 4 games ( with some caveats), and Sony currently only offers the option to play PS3 and PS2 games using its PS Now game streaming service. While RetroArch is able to emulate several different consoles, the compatibility for running PS2 games using the PCSX2 core is particularly notable because of how limited Sony’s PlayStation 5 is when it comes to backwards compatibility compared to the Xbox. Thanks to the Xbox Series X / S consoles’ “Developer Mode,” the emulation software can be added as a Universal Windows Application (UWA), allowing users to download a retail version of the emulation software directly to their console without tricky workarounds, so players don’t have to wait for a re-release to play an older favorite.

Developers have now made it possible to emulate PS2 games on the Xbox Series X and S using the RetroArch emulator - something that the PlayStation 5, a successor to the PS2, can’t.