Rumor: Is Microsoft Really Working With Xenia Developers… Under NDA?

There’s an interesting situation going on right now in relation to some Xbox rumors.

Yesterday, we reported on eXtas1s’ rumor that Microsoft is working on a new Xbox Classics program, to bring Xbox and Xbox 360 games to Game Pass. What’s curious about this is eXtas1s claims that Microsoft is working with the developers of Xenia Canary.

For those who don’t know about the emulation community, Xenia and Xenia Canary are projects to build an open source emulator to play Xbox 360 games on modern PCs. Xenia Canary is a fork of Xenia. In plain English, a separate team of developers split off to make their own version of Xenia that gets more frequent updates. As a result, Xenia Canary is compatible with more games.

Today we seem to have proof that this rumor was completely debunked. Jez Corden was asked about it on Twitter and he gave this response:

This is false. I expect more of your Xbox games to be playable in more places but this particular scenario isn’t on the cards today.

As reported by Insider Gaming, ZoloKluk, who is a member of the Xenia Canary team, shared this statement on their Discord:

It’s not real Microsoft has their own Xbox 360 emulator, they’d never even consult Xenia. If it was real I’d be under an NDA.

That last statement is what makes things even more intriguing. eXtas1s saw the Xenia team’s alleged rebuttal of his story, and interestingly, he pointed out the NDA and doubled down.

eXtas1s said this on Twitter (translated using DeepL and edited for clarity):

The full context is that Microsoft gets sponsorships, benefits and staff from Git Hub. Every month they make alliances or hire groups and individuals that bring solutions and projects to Microsoft. In this case, Xenia entered the program in the last month.

If this is the case, and they are under NDA, logically they can’t do anything but deny it. But don’t worry, in 2026 we’ll see each other.

When prodded further about the accuracy of his claims, he said this:

It’s something that’s within Microsoft’s own most recent employee newsletter, it’s not like it’s a misleading one.

As we had pointed out before, eXtas1s has gotten rumors wrong before. He knows if he gets a rumor wrong again it can be another hit in his reputation. He seems confident in doubling down because the evidence is an internal Microsoft newsletter. ZoloKluk also seemed to hint on not being at liberty to say the truth because of the NDA, though one does wonder why the Xenia team would not just deny to answer if that were the case.

One does wonder why Microsoft would start this initiative only a few years after they finished up their latest Backwards Compatibility Program. It’s possible that the Xenia Canary team was able to make breakthroughs Microsoft’s own dev teams could not. And so, Microsoft may be interested in hiring the Xenia Canary team in the same way that Nintendo was rumored to have hired outsider emulator developers to start their Virtual Console program on the Wii all those years ago.