Xbox One Version of Minecraft Launched on iPhone

The fan-made tool Utsuro runs Minecraft: Xbox One Edition on iPhone, and Sonic Mania and Rocket League on Mac.

The fan project lets users run Xbox One games on iPhone and Mac without emulating the console’s hardware. It is at an early stage of development.

The project’s author has shown the first results. According to the author, Minecraft: Xbox One Edition runs great on iOS. On Mac, Sonic Mania runs at about 57 frames per second with sound, and Rocket League also launches. Rocket League performs much worse, with a frame rate below 20 FPS and numerous lighting glitches.

Utsuro uses the console’s Windows-based software environment and runs x86-64 code on Apple’s ARM processors through FEXCore, instead of emulating the entire Xbox One hardware.

On iPhone, the app must be installed outside the official store. That is difficult without a jailbreak. A decrypted copy of the game is also required. For now, users must build the macOS version themselves from source code.

For now, Utsuro remains an experimental solution. It is unclear how many games can be run this way or whether the project can handle more demanding titles.