Xenia Manager¶

Plays Xbox 360 games on the AMD BC-250 with Xenia, an Xbox 360 emulator, in its Xenia Canary builds. The app installs a tested build, finds your games and adds them to Steam, so they start from Game Mode like any other game.

Xenia's Linux build is experimental: not every game starts, and a game that runs on Windows may not run here. Whether a game runs, and how well, is up to Xenia. Its compatibility list says what is known.

What you need¶

Your games, from your own discs and console: disc images (.iso), discs unpacked to a folder with a default.xex, Xenia's .zar archives, and Games on Demand and Arcade packages as the console keeps them. The app never downloads games.
Steam, started at least once, for Game Mode.
FUSE, which Bazzite has: Xenia comes as an AppImage.
No BIOS or firmware: Xenia does not need the console's.

Using it¶

The window has two steps, then the list of games.

Xenia: Install downloads Xenia (about 18 MB) and checks it against the checksum of the build the app was tried with before installing it. Remove takes it out again; Xenia's own folder, with its settings, saves and installed content, stays.
Game folders: the folders the app looks for games in. Add folder… adds one, Remove folder… stops looking in one (the games stay where they are). A game may sit up to six folders deep.

The table lists every game found:

A disc image is a game when it is an Xbox 360 disc (the app looks for the disc's mark where Xenia looks for it), listed under its file's name.
An unpacked disc is its default.xex, listed under its folder's name; the other .xex files in that folder are its parts. Any other .xex is listed under its own name.
A .zar archive is listed under its file's name; the app does not look into it.
A Games on Demand or Arcade package is listed under the name in its header. Keep it in the folders the console made (<title ID>/00007000/ or <title ID>/000D0000/). Saves, downloadable content and title updates are not games and are left out.

The Title ID column shows the game's ID (4D5307E6), from the .xex or the package, where the app can read it.

Play (or a double-click) starts the chosen game on the desktop, in a window.
Xenia settings opens Xenia's own window, with its settings, profiles and installed content.

Game Mode¶

Tick the games you want in Game Mode and press Update Game Mode. The app adds them to Steam as non-Steam games and takes out the games you unticked and games it no longer finds. Steam keeps these files in memory, so it closes for the change and starts again in the background. The pictures on the tiles are drawn from the app's icon, with the game's title, on a background in the icon's color, and the icon is the logo on the banner.

In Steam each game's name starts with its system, for example [X360] Halo 3, so it stands apart from the same title on Steam or on another system in Steam's menus.

In Game Mode the games are in the library under Non-Steam. They start the game alone in Xenia, full screen. Steam's overlay works over a game started from Steam, in Game Mode and on the desktop: press Shift+Tab or the Steam button for the game's page, its controller layout and its settings, without leaving the game.

Change Game Mode from Desktop Mode: in Game Mode Steam is the session itself and cannot close for the change.

Covers¶

With a SteamGridDB API key, the app takes all four pictures from SteamGridDB instead of drawing them: the cover, the wide picture, the banner and the logo. Press Covers… to enter the key, one for the whole suite. A picture SteamGridDB does not have stays drawn. See Covers from SteamGridDB for the key, how a game is looked up and how to use pictures of your own.

From a terminal¶

bc250-xenia-run starts the installed Xenia with the options you give it. The Game Mode shortcuts use it, so they keep working when a newer version of the app brings a newer Xenia. Xenia's options take the form --name=value.

bc250-xenia-run --fullscreen=true "/path/to/game.iso"   # a game full screen (Game Mode)
bc250-xenia-run "/path/to/game.iso"                     # a game in a window
bc250-xenia-run                                         # Xenia's own window

New Xenia builds¶

Xenia has no stable releases: Xenia Canary publishes a build for almost every change, named after the change (e6cd2e4). Each version of the app installs one build, the one it was tried with. When the window opens, the app asks GitHub for the newest build; when one was published after the app's, the first step says so, with a link to what changed. The app does not install it. A newer build comes with a newer version of the app, once it has been tried, from the portal: after updating the app, the first step says so, and Install brings it.

How it works¶

The Game Mode shortcuts start bc250-xenia-run, which starts Xenia. Started with Play, from outside Steam, Xenia runs as it is.

Controllers¶

When Steam starts a game, it tells the game's controller library (SDL) to ignore the controllers Steam handles itself, and gives the game Steam's virtual controller in their place (Steam Input). Xenia then sees only that virtual controller, and on the desktop it follows the layout Steam has active, which may be Steam's desktop layout (mouse and keys).

So the run wrapper undoes it: while a real controller is connected, Xenia reads that controller itself and leaves Steam's virtual one (USB ID 28DE:11FF) out. Without a real controller, as on a Steam Deck whose own controls exist only as Steam's virtual controller, the wrapper leaves Steam's choice as it is.

Steam's overlay on the desktop¶

Xenia's window goes through X11 (XWayland on the KDE desktop of Bazzite) by itself, so Steam's overlay sees it on the desktop too, and the run wrapper has nothing to change for it.

What goes where¶

What	Where
The app	`~/.local/share/bc250-xenia-manager/app`
Xenia	`~/.local/share/bc250-xenia-manager/emulator`
Xenia's settings, saves and installed content	`~/.local/share/Xenia` (Xenia's own folder)
The app's settings, with the game folders	`~/.config/bc250-xenia-manager`
The Game Mode shortcuts	Steam's `shortcuts.vdf` and `grid` folder, per Steam user
The pictures found on SteamGridDB	`~/.local/share/bc250-xenia-manager/covers`
Launchers	`~/.local/bin/bc250-xenia-manager`, `~/.local/bin/bc250-xenia-run`

Install and remove¶

Install the app from the portal, where it is under Gaming. Removing it takes out the app and the Xenia it installed; Xenia's own folder (your settings, saves and installed content) and your games stay. The games in Game Mode then no longer start: take them out first by unticking them and pressing Update Game Mode.

./install.sh                         # install or update
./install.sh --no-desktop-shortcut   # app menu entry only, no icon on the Desktop
./install.sh --uninstall             # remove the app and the Xenia it installed; keeps its settings
./install.sh --uninstall --purge     # also remove its settings and covers

Disclaimer¶

Xenia Manager is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Xbox 360 is a trademark of its owner.

License¶

GPL-3.0-or-later. Xenia (BSD-3-Clause) is a separate program under its own license, downloaded from its own releases.