As it turns out, the Xbox Series X can run PlayStation 2 games pretty well

Looks like the Xbox Series X|S beat the PlayStation 5’s backward compatibility features in more ways than one. 

With a little bit of finagling, people are now playing PlayStation 2 games on their Xbox Series X and S consoles. Both of Microsoft’s next-generation consoles have a developer mode that users can activate, which lets them run Universal Windows Protocol (UWP) applications.

This means that you can actually download a retail version of RetroArch, a popular front end for various emulators, with very little resistance on Microsoft’s end. 

RetroArch is capable of emulating several consoles (such as the GameCube), but users have managed to emulate PS2 games with great success.

Older console exclusives like God of War, Shadow of the Colossus and more run quite smoothly, considering that there are limits imposed in developer mode, such as a file size cap.

Modern Vintage Gamer demonstrates how well the Xbox Series X/S can run PlayStation 2 games below:

What’s funny about this whole situation is that, technically, the Xbox Series X|S now has better backward compatibility features with PlayStation games than the actual PlayStation 5.

[embed]https://youtu.be/psTunlgKOMM[/embed]

Sony’s next-generation console is only capable of natively running PlayStation 4 games, and even then, not all of them. 

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.