Xenia Manager¶

Gets your XBOX 360 games ready to play from Steam with Xenia, the XBOX 360 emulator, in its Xenia Canary builds, and takes care of everything around it: it installs one tested build of Xenia for your own user, offers Xenia's settings, finds your games in its own Games\XBOX360 folder, puts them in Steam, and keeps a log. You play from Steam, and never need Xenia's own window: a game starts full screen.

Xenia Manager is on the portal's Gaming tab: A on its tile installs it, and once it is installed, A opens it. It is also in the Start menu (Windows Portable Suite, Xenia Manager). It opens full screen; B goes back and ⧉ (View) exits it.

Whether a game runs, and how well, is up to Xenia. Its compatibility list shows what others found.

What you need¶

Your XBOX 360 games, from your own discs and console, on the device or an SD card: 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 (<title ID>\00007000\… or <title ID>\000D0000\…). The app never downloads a game.
No BIOS or firmware: Xenia does not need the console's.
Microsoft's Visual C++ runtime, which Steam and most games install already. Xenia for Windows does not start without it; the Xenia pane says so when it is missing, and vc_redist.x64.exe from Microsoft installs it.
Windows 11: Xenia comes as a .7z, which the app unpacks with Windows' own tar; the tar of Windows 10 cannot, and the pane says so.
Steam, started once on the device, to play the games from Steam (optional: without Steam, X Play starts a game in Xenia itself).

The screen¶

Four cards on the left, Xenia, Your games, Settings and Log; the right side shows what the focused card does. The d-pad or the left stick moves the amber focus. Every action is a button, listed in the row at the bottom with what it does on the pane that shows: A included (A Install, A Steam mark, A View log). Press the button, or tap the entry. B goes back: from a list or a page to where you came from, from a pane to its card on the left (on a card it does nothing). Once you are in a pane, the d-pad stays in it: at the top or bottom of a list the focus stops, and only B takes you back to the cards. ⧉ (View) exits the app. ☰ (Menu) opens the information of the pane that shows, and closes it again; the information icon at a pane's top right does the same by touch.

The amber edge shows where you are, as in every app of the suite. Nothing is ever grayed out: when a button cannot do its job now, pressing it says why on the pane's status line. Every card, row and entry also works by touch, and a long list scrolls with the d-pad or a finger.

Xenia¶

The Xenia card on the left says only whether Xenia is installed and which button acts: Not installed. and Install with the A button. until it is installed, then Installed. and Remove with the X button.

The pane shows the Xenia build that is installed, the one this version of the app installs, the profile Xenia signs in, how many games were found and the folder. When Xenia Canary has published a newer build than the one this app brings, a row says so.

A Install (also A on the Xenia card) downloads Xenia Canary build cf206a3 for Windows from Xenia Canary's release on GitHub (4 MB), checks it against the checksum this version of the app was tested with, and unpacks it. The page counts the megabytes while it downloads. Nothing is downloaded before you press A.
X Remove Xenia removes Xenia's program. Press it twice: the first press only changes the entry to Press again for five seconds. Xenia's own files, your saves and its settings, stay, so a new install finds them again. It does not work while Xenia runs.
Y Update shows when another Xenia build is installed, and puts in the one this version of the app brings.
LB Create profile makes a profile, the console's user: a game saves only to one, and Xenia itself makes one only in its own window. Type a gamertag (R3 opens the touch keyboard; up to 15 letters and digits, starting with a letter, with single spaces between words) and press A Create; B goes back without one. Xenia signs the new profile in whenever it starts a game, so no game asks for one. The pane's Profile row says which profile that is. The profile stays on the device, in Xenia's content folder, and is never online. It does not work while Xenia runs.

⧉ during a download asks first: a second ⧉ within five seconds exits the app, and the download stops.

Xenia keeps its files beside its program, in the app's emulator folder (on Windows it is portable by itself): its settings (xenia-canary.config.toml), what your games keep (content, with the saves), its caches and its own log (xenia_canary.log, written anew each time it starts).

A newer Xenia never reaches the device by itself: Xenia Canary publishes a new build almost every day, which may change how games run, so it comes only with a new version of Xenia Manager, tried first, which the portal offers as an update. Then Y Update puts in its program, and what you made stays.

Where your games go¶

The app has a folder of its own, which it makes when it opens; you never choose or browse to a folder:

Games\XBOX360 in your user folder (C:\Users\<you>\Games\XBOX360): put your games there and they show on Your games. On an SD card or a USB drive, make a folder Games\XBOX360 on it, and the app looks there too.

Xenia needs no firmware or other files from the console, so there is nothing else to put anywhere. The Log card shows where the folder is.

Games\XBOX360\
├── Halo 3.iso                  a disc image
├── Gears of War\               an unpacked disc: default.xex and its files
└── 4D5307E6\00007000\…         a Games on Demand package, as the console keeps it

Your games¶

The games are found in the Games\XBOX360 folders (see Where your games go) and up to six folders below them, each listed with its title, its title ID where the app can read it (4D5307E6) and its kind:

Kind	What it is
ISO	A disc image (`.iso`) that is an XBOX 360 disc; named after its file
XEX	An unpacked disc: the `default.xex` in its folder, named after the folder (its other `.xex` files are its modules); or a single `.xex`
ZAR	Xenia's ZArchive of a disc, named after its file
Games on Demand	A package in a `00007000` folder, with the name it carries
Arcade	An XBOX Live Arcade package in a `000D0000` folder, with the name it carries

Other packages, such as saves, downloadable content and title updates, are not games. A on the Your games card goes to the list.

You play the games from Steam; the app puts them there, and starts them there with X.

A Steam mark on a game marks it for Steam, or takes the mark away. Y Update Steam then makes Steam match the marks: each marked game is a non-Steam game named [X360] <title> in Steam's library and its Big Picture mode; a game without the mark, or no longer found, is taken out. Steam closes for it and starts again, its window open and signed in. Steam must have been started once on the device, and Xenia must be installed. When there is nothing to change, Y says so on the status line instead. Right after writing, the app reads Steam's file back and counts the games in Steam from that; should a game it wrote not be found, the status line and the log say which.
X Play on a game that is in Steam starts it through Steam, as its tile in Steam's library would; Steam starts first when it is not open. A game that is not in Steam yet says so: mark it with A, then Y Update Steam. On a device without Steam (not installed, or never started), X Play starts the game in Xenia itself, full screen, the same way Steam would.
LT Refresh reads the game folders again: a game put there, renamed or taken away while the app is open shows at once. A game in Steam that you rename or move keeps its mark when the app can tell it is the same game (by its title ID or serial, or a disc image by its size): Y Update Steam then puts it in Steam under its new name and takes the old shortcut out. Until then, its shortcut in Steam shows a screen that says the game is no longer there, instead of starting the emulator; A closes it.
Steam's library opens from the portal: RT Steam in its bottom row.
RB Remove game on a game shows what would go, and you decide what to keep before anything is deleted. Each part is a row with its size: a disc image (.iso, .zar) or a single .xex is its file, an unpacked disc its folder; a Games on Demand or Arcade package has a row for the game, one for its title updates and one for its add-ons, so you can keep the add-ons; a game in Steam also has a row for its Steam shortcut. Every row starts as Delete: A turns the row to Keep, and back. X Delete marked deletes the rows still marked Delete (the shortcut through Steam, which closes for it and starts again) and keeps the others; B goes back and deletes nothing. Your saves are never on the list: they stay in Xenia's content folder. The app offers no game whose folder is one of the app's Games\XBOX360 folders itself, a drive, or a folder holding another game: the status line says to delete it by hand.

The app reads no pictures from a game, so the pictures in Steam are drawn from this app's icon, with the game's title. With a SteamGridDB API key, Update Steam takes all four of a game's pictures from SteamGridDB instead: LB Steam artwork opens the page that keeps the key (X Paste, R3 ⌨, A Save, Y Remove key twice, B back without saving). See Steam artwork from SteamGridDB.

In a game¶

A game starts full screen, with the device's controller as the XBOX 360's.

To quit a game, hold View, LB and RB together for two seconds: Xenia closes as its window would close, and you are back in Steam, or in the app when it started the game. Closing the game at the top of the screen says the hold was seen. It works the same in every game manager of the suite, started from Steam's library or from the app. The line at the bottom of Your games says so when a game starts. Steam's own menu (the Steam button, or the guide button) and its Exit game end the game too.

When the device runs hot, you are warned without the game stopping. While a game runs, the app reads the chip's temperature every two seconds. When the CPU or the GPU stays above 90 °C for half a minute, a banner shows at the top of the screen for a few seconds (on every screen, with a second one attached), and the controller rumbles three times; it warns again at most every five minutes while the chip stays that hot. The banner takes no press and does not take the focus from the game. A pause, or a lower performance mode (the portal's Performance Mode page), lets the device cool down. When the game ends, the log (A View log on the Log pane) says how hot the chip got and for how long. Windows cannot read how hot the outside of the device is: the chip's temperature is the closest reading, and the chip slows itself down at its own limit.

Settings¶

The Settings card's pane has four tabs, Screen, Speed, Sound and Console: LB and RB step through them, or tap one. A tab is a row per setting with its value; A on one steps to the next value and saves it at once into Xenia's settings (xenia-canary.config.toml in its folder; the row at the bottom says A Change, LB Previous tab, RB Next tab). Xenia reads them when a game starts; while Xenia is open, the pane asks you to close it first, since Xenia writes its settings when it starts. A game's own settings in Xenia come before these. The information icon at the pane's top right says what each setting of the tab does.

Screen

Setting	Values
Graphics	Automatic (Direct3D 12, Xenia's choice), Direct3D 12, Vulkan
Resolution scale	Native (720p), 2x (1440p), 3x (2160p): higher asks much more of the graphics chip, and breaks some games
Anti-aliasing	Off, FXAA, FXAA extreme
Scaling and sharpening	Bilinear, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, FidelityFX Super Resolution
Keep the picture's shape	On (bars where the screen's shape differs) or Off (stretched)
VSync	On or Off

Speed

Setting	Values
Frame limit	As the game (60 with VSync on), 30, 60
Readback resolve	Off, Fast, Full: for a game that shows wrong or missing effects

Sound

Setting	Values
Sound output	Automatic (XAudio2, Xenia's choice), XAudio2, SDL
Mute	On or Off

Console

Setting	Values
Arcade license	None, Full version, All licenses: for an XBOX Live Arcade game whose package has the trial alone licensed
Achievement messages	On or Off
Guide button to the game	On or Off: whether the guide button reaches the game

The values show once Xenia is installed; until Xenia has written its settings, they are its own defaults. A value in Xenia's settings that the app does not offer is shown as it is, and A goes on from the first value.

Log¶

Xenia's folder, where your Games\XBOX360 folder is and how many games are found, and the newest lines of this app's log (the install, the Steam changes, the games removed and the settings changed). A View log, or a tap on the pane, shows the whole log in the pane: the d-pad scrolls it, and B goes back.

How it works¶

A game's shortcut in Steam starts the app itself in its play mode, Xenia-Manager.exe --play --fullscreen=true "<game>", which shows no window: it starts xenia_canary.exe --fullscreen=true "<game>" in Xenia's folder, as the BC250 suite's Xenia Manager starts it (the value on the command line is not written into Xenia's settings), watches the controller for View, LB and RB held, and ends when Xenia ends, so Steam sees the game end. Asked to close, Xenia gets ten seconds before it is ended. On a device without Steam the app starts a game the same way. A shortcut made by an earlier version, which starts xenia_canary.exe itself, shows (Update Steam) on its game: Y Update Steam writes it again.

Every Monday the suite checks that the file Xenia Manager downloads is still the one it was tested with, and whether Xenia Canary has published a newer build, which a new version of the app can bring once it is tried; the Xenia pane shows the newest too.

Install it on its own¶

The portal installs it. To install it on its own, download wp-xenia-v<x.y.z>.zip and SHA256SUMS from its release, then in PowerShell, in that folder:

(Get-FileHash wp-xenia-v<x.y.z>.zip).Hash -eq (-split (Get-Content SHA256SUMS))[0]   # True: the download is intact
Expand-Archive wp-xenia-v<x.y.z>.zip . -Force
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File wp-xenia-v<x.y.z>\install.ps1

Installed on its own, it gets a Start-menu entry and a Desktop shortcut. Afterwards the installer asks whether to remove the download.

Option
`--no-desktop-shortcut`	the Start-menu entry only
`--uninstall`	remove the app; the settings, the log and Xenia with your saves stay
`--uninstall --purge`	also remove the settings, the log and Xenia's folder, with your saves and its settings in it

Files¶

Where	What
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-xenia\app\`	The program, `Xenia-Manager.exe`
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-xenia\emulator\`	Xenia (`xenia_canary.exe`), `installed.json` (the build the app installed), and everything Xenia keeps beside it: `xenia-canary.config.toml` (its settings), `content\` (your games' content and the saves), its caches, `xenia_canary.log` (its own log)
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-xenia\covers\`	The pictures from SteamGridDB, per game
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-xenia\windows-portable-xenia.log`	The log
`%USERPROFILE%\Games\XBOX360\`	Your games, and `Games\XBOX360` on an SD card or USB drive
`%APPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\windows-portable-xenia.ini`	The settings
`%APPDATA%\windows-portable-suite\steamgriddb-key`	Your SteamGridDB API key, when you put one there
Steam's `userdata\<user>\config\shortcuts.vdf` and `grid\`	The games in Steam and their pictures