Xenia Canary Crushes Red Dead Redemption’s Xbox 360 Port on PC With Over 100 FPS

The PC platform has a rich library, but some console exclusives never really made it to PC back in 2010, and this was pretty painful for PC users back in the day, being teased by console fanboys for not getting console exclusives such as Red Dead Redemption too. But times have changed. Red Dead Redemption runs on Xenia’s canary build with over 100 FPS.

Xenia’s Canary Build Runs Red Dead Redemption at 100 FPS?

It seems as if the PC is enacting its long-awaited revenge on the game that never came out to the platform torturing it by pumping over hundreds of FPS into Red Dead Redemption’s engine. To put things into perspective, Red Dead redemptions had a pretty sloppy performance on the Xbox 360.

First of all, the game was capped to 30FPS at 720p, which is considered to be way below the standard in the current gaming space. Secondly, the game never kept a steady framerate for the Xbox 360. It was well below 25 FPS. As soon as players headed into towns, the frame rate would get really choppy and ruin the experience of the game, that is for console plebs who could notice a choppy framerate. The Xbox 360 is now a relic of the past, but the PC is forever.

The glorious PC master race has stood the test of time again and again, and now with Red Dead Redemption’s port for the Xbox 360 running at an impressive hundred of FPS for the PC, fans can now enjoy Red Dead Redemption running at 4K 100 FPS.

The new Xenia canary build came out quite recently, and emulating hobbyists and games took to Youtube to showcase the pros and cons of the new build. Youtube channel, Emulators, and Gameplay HD ran tests for Xenia and presented Red Dead Redemption in a light never before seen on the consoles where it was initially released.

However, you need a glorious PC Master race build to get the game running at high frame rates. After some benchmarking for the Xenia Canary build of the Xbox emulator, the channel concluded that the new build could run Red Dead Redemption at an average of 100 FPS, and that’s just for the hustling and bustling towns of Red Dead. If you move to less populated areas, expect frame rates of up to 144 FPS, while in towns, you can expect a respectable 70 to 100 FPS.

But there are some caveats to running this game at 100 FPS and that it’s going to empty your wallet. The PC used for the benchmark featured an Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K and a Geforce 3080 Ti. But if you just want to run the game at a reasonable frame rate, a lower-end CPU and GPU still might do the trick.

How did we get to Xenia’s Canary Build?

To those who are unfamiliar with the Xenia Project, it’s an Xbox 360 emulator for the PC that aims to bring Xbox 360 games to the PC that never really made it over to the platform. The Xenia project aims to bring us a gaming experience that far outranks the Xbox 360 provided, and now, it’s become entirely possible with the Xenia canary build, which is still experimental at this moment in time.

The main focus of the project is to improve performance across the board. Xenia is currently trying to make its way to Linux, but the progress is pretty slow. macOS support seems like an impossibility, that is, if Apple decides to add support for Vulkan.

So, how did the Xenia scene start? Ben Vanik decided to pick up some region-locked Japanese video games that didn’t work with his Xbox 360, so he decided to delve into the Homebrew Scene. He initially developed a PSP emulator but noticed that no one was working on an Xbox 360 emulator, so he said what the heck and hopped on the project. He did it all for the sake of fun and to relieve some boredom.

The project began when I (@benvanik) was between jobs and wanted to hack on something fun. I’d picked up some region-locked Japanese games when I was visiting Tokyo and was frustrated I couldn’t play them on my 360, so I started researching the 360 homebrew scene. I’d previously written a PlayStation Portable emulator and enjoyed it, noticed no one was playing with a 360 emulator, and thought ‘what the hell’. Since then it’s been an on-again off-again project done in my spare time when bored (or when @gibbed has some time and gets me excited)

With future updates and improving hardware across every generation, we’ll get to enjoy our console exclusive titles at higher resolutions than they were intended to run, or they might get remakes and remasters such as The Last of Us Remake Part 1.

But sadly, fans won’t be getting a Red Dead Redemption Remaster considering Rockstar Games decided to can the whole project along with a GTA IV Remaster due to the apparent failure of the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition’s failure. The Red Dead Remaster would’ve provided fans with an official way to finally play the original Red Dead Redemption in a new light. But thankfully, we can play the Xbox 360 port via the Xenia emulator on the PC 

If you’re interested in getting your hands on the Xenia canary build, you can get it right here. But to run the game at an unlocked frame rate, you need to use an additional patch designed for Xenia to get it up and running at over 100 FPS.

And that’s pretty much it for today’s news. We upload daily on Appuals, so stay tuned for more. Till then, see you later and goo