Somehow, a PS2 game emulator is available on the Xbox Store

An unofficial PlayStation 2 emulator has recently appeared on the Xbox Store. It’s free to try and play although we don’t necessarily condone doing it on the grounds that piracy is, you know, illegal and could actually land you in jail. Then “good” news is that you can’t exactly access the PS2 emulator normally. So, unless you know what you’re doing, the PS2 emulator won’t be available for you to see. Instead, the individuals responsible for the upload hid the emulator using a special “hidden format” to prevent the Xbox store from otherwise banning it.

The PS2 is arguably the most influential video game console of all time.

The reason for this is simple: Microsoft does not condone the presence of emulators on its store, let alone a competitor’s console. Sony‘s PlayStation 2 is the best-selling game console of all time, with the company selling over 155 million units during the PS2’s lifetime. It came out in 2000 and didn’t end in 2013.

With over 1.5 billion copies sold of over 4,000 games, the PS2 is an iconic console that will reign atop the record books for a long while. Case in point, Sony effectively retired the PS4 at 117.2 million units. The closest unit that has a remote chance of catching up to the PS2 sales record is the Nintendo Switch at 111.08 million units but even that is a stretch.

Moving on, the enduring popularity of the PS2 paves the way for emulators. This is software a that enables players to play PS2 games on non-PS2 consoles. In this case, the unofficial PS2 emulator on the Xbox Store lets you play PS2 games on an Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X console.

As for how the developers “protected” the PS2 emulator from the usually strict stores of the Xbox Store, it’s cleverly packaged inside the Xbox Games SDK. What happens is that the Xbox console runs it as a game instead of an application.

For what it’s worth, this PS2 emulator reportedly runs better than an original PS2 console as it lets players render full-screen display and texture filtering at Full HD, among others.

Now that the news of the PS2 emulator has broken out, we’re expecting Microsoft to find a way around the workaround to ban the app.