aX360e - RetroBIOS¶
Technical notes
Xbox 360 emulator for Android, distributed on Google Play as aenu.ax360e and aenu.ax360e.free. Xenia Canary is vendored whole under app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary at canary_experimental dc561e4d, and a JNI layer replaces the desktop front end: its own windowed app and window, AAudio and OpenSLES audio systems, an Android input driver, and disc image, disc archive, STFS and XEX devices backed by the Storage Access Framework. ref: ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/version.h:4-5, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/CMakeLists.txt:39-74, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/ax360e_emu.cpp:615
The version is read from the commit subjects, which carry it: 1.18 is the head of main, 1.17 the drop before it. The repository has no tags, and the only gradle file committed is app/build.gradle.bak, which still declares versionName 0.14 and is renamed and completed with the signing block at build time. ref: ax360e/README.md, ax360e/app/build.gradle.bak:13-14
No Xbox 360 system file is loaded. The kernel, XAM and XBDM are HLE modules registered at startup, and every key the emulator needs is a constant in the source: the XEX1 retail, XEX2 retail and XEX2 devkit keys tried in turn when an image is read, the 0x19 key pair the profile blob is encrypted with, and the key vault map XeKeysGetKey answers from. There is no NAND, flash or keyvault path. ref: ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/emulator.cc:316-318, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/cpu/xex_module.cc:54-62, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/cpu/xex_module.cc:953-963, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/kernel/util/crypto_utils.cc:20-31, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/kernel/xboxkrnl/xboxkrnl_crypt.cc:164-168
The storage root is the external files directory of the package and is passed
as a launch argument beside the config path and the log path. Content, cache,
patches and plugins hang off it, the global configuration is
xenia-canary.config.toml, and per title overrides live in
custom_config/
ES-DE starts the emulator with the aenu.intent.action.AX360E action and a game_uri extra. The native side dispatches on the name the descriptor resolves to: .xex, .iso and .zar each go to their own loader, and anything else is taken for an STFS container and launched beside a sibling directory named after the file with .data appended. ref: ax360e/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml:57-59, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/ax360e_emu.cpp:554-575
A default profile ships with the application. Its Account blob is extracted from the assets on first run under XUID E0300000A360E000, and the shipped configuration logs that XUID into slot 0. Further profiles are created by the emulator itself, which writes the blob it encrypts. ref: ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Application.java:30-34, ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Application.java:92-96, ax360e/app/src/main/assets/config/default_config.toml:314, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/kernel/xam/profile_manager.cc:502-558
477 game patches ship inside the APK. The patch database reads the patches directory only, so a bundled patch reaches the emulator once the user opens the patch dialog for that title and presses Apply, which writes the asset out under the same name. ref: ax360e/app/src/main/assets/game-patches, ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/patch_db.cc:30-56, ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Emulator.java:121-151, ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/MainActivity.java:503-512
6 files | 0 required, 6 optional | 1 in repo, 5 missing
<driver>.zip optional missing
Replacement Vulkan driver package
- Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/EmulatorSettings.java:709-713,ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Utils.java:150-215,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/ui/vulkan/vulkan_instance.cc:34,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/ui/vulkan/vulkan_instance.cc:71-91,ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/emulator/Emulator.java:116-122 - Config key:
Vulkan|vulkan_lib_path - Imported through a picker that keeps only names ending in .zip. The archive is read whole, meta.json names the library to keep, and a single .so is taken instead when no meta.json is present; the .so files and meta.json are unpacked into a directory named after the archive, in internal storage. The configured path is read before the instance is created and opened through adrenotools when it exists, otherwise the system libvulkan.so is used. The setting is greyed out on devices without /dev/kgsl-3d0.
<font>.ttf optional missing
Replacement face for the overlay text
- Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/ui/imgui_drawer.cc:42-44,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/ui/imgui_drawer.cc:340-374,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/ui/imgui_drawer.cc:507-514 - Config key:
UI|custom_font_path - Loaded first when the configured path exists, over the Basic Latin, Latin Supplement, Extended Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, punctuation, superscript, letterlike and number form ranges. A face that fails to build is cleared and the embedded ProggyTiny is used instead, so the absence is covered.
<title_id> - <title>.patch.toml optional missing bundled
Memory patch set for one title
- Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/patch_db.cc:17-18,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/patch_db.cc:30-98,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/patch_db.h:121-122,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/patcher.cc:22-35,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/emulator.cc:308 - Read from the patches directory under the storage root, keeping names that open with eight hexadecimal digits and close with .patch.toml. The title id and title name fields and a hash node are mandatory, the file is dropped without them, and each entry of the patch array is applied only when its is_enabled flag is set and the module hash matches. Patching is on by default.
plugins.toml optional missing
Plugin manifest for one title
- Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/plugin_loader.cc:16-21,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/plugin_loader.cc:40-127,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/emulator.cc:320-321 - Config key:
General|allow_plugins - Read from plugins/
/ under the storage root, where the directory name is eight hexadecimal digits. Each entry of the plugin array needs a hash node, and an entry without one is skipped. Plugin loading is off by default, so nothing under plugins is scanned until it is turned on.
<plugin>.xex optional missing
Plugin module named by a plugin manifest
- Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/patcher/plugin_loader.cc:175-257,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/emulator.cc:1996-1999 - The title directory is mounted as the plugins device and each enabled entry whose hash matches the running module is loaded as a user module on its own thread. A directory that cannot be mounted is a fatal error.
Account optional in repo bundled
Encrypted profile account blob
- Path:
content/<XUID>/FFFE07D1/00010000/<XUID>/Account - Source:
ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/kernel/xam/profile_manager.cc:188-230,ax360e/app/src/main/cpp/xenia-canary/src/xenia/kernel/xam/profile_manager.cc:40-68,ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Application.java:30-34,ax360e/app/src/main/java/aenu/ax360e/Application.java:92-96 - Opened from the mounted profile when a XUID is logged in, and decrypted with the 0x19 key, retail first then devkit, against the HMAC the first sixteen bytes carry. The application extracts the one it ships for XUID E0300000A360E000 on first run, and the emulator writes its own when a profile is created.
Generated on 2026-08-23T16:12:06Z