Install Windows on a PS4 or Xbox One Console: is it Possible?

This makes special sense when we talk about the Xbox One, since it is manufactured by the same manufacturer that develops the Windows operating system, right? Especially when at Microsoft they boast of their “universal platform”, with which they intend to unify their entire ecosystem of hardware and software products.

So can you use a console like Windows PC ?

Why can’t you install Windows on a console?

Each console has its own customized operating system, and although in some cases modified versions of Linux can be installed, it is a really hard job and with many ballots to give problems, so it is not at all viable.

It is evident that neither SONY nor Microsoft want to sell their consoles, which cost around 300 euros, so that people use them as a cheap gaming PC. They sell the console for you to use as a console, and to buy their games.

For this reason, Microsoft has already made it clear that it had implemented a system on Xbox 360 (DRM – Digital Rights Management) to prevent the modification of the console, something that SONY also did on its own (PS3 at the time). This same system has been inherited by PS4 and Xbox One, and of course PS5 and Xbox Series X will do.

But DRM is not only about software, it has also been implemented in the form of hardware modifications. Following the example of the Xbox, although it is an x86-64 architecture like PCs, it has a huge layer of customization just on top of the architecture that makes its hardware directly incompatible with Windows .

For example, the Southbridge of the Xbox One (it is the chip that connects the CPU to input and output devices such as USB or network card) is a design customized by Microsoft that requires drivers written specifically for it, and that the system Windows operating literally does not understand.

The same is reflected in the Northbridge, located inside the die of the processor and which is responsible for connecting the CPU cores to memory, as well as the SMC (system management controller), responsible for the basic functions of the hardware, such as the control of fans, status indicator LEDs or temperature sensors. All this, directly cannot work in Windows because it does not understand the drivers, which are also specific to the console.

So it just can’t be done?

Virtually yes it would be possible, but you would have to make modifications at the Windows kernel level (it is the part of the operating system that, among other things, is responsible for communicating the operating system with the hardware) so that they can be linked to the hardware of the console.

Typically, there is a “layer” called a “hardware abstraction layer” (HAL) in the BIOS that is placed between the kernel and hardware so that they can understand and communicate with each other, and it takes multiple HALs for an operating system to work with different types of hardware. Since there is no HAL in Windows for Xbox or PS4, for Windows to work in the console we would have to write the HAL from scratch.

But, in addition to that, we would find the impediments that we have already talked about (the specific drivers, the DRM, etc.) plus another additional one, and that is that both the Xbox and the PlayStation have a very different starting sequence than the it has a PC when it is turned on, and this would directly cause Windows not to know how to start on a console.

In the case of Xbox, we must add another impediment, and that is that while Windows uses a file system called NTFS, Xbox uses another called Fat X and, in fact, the BIOS of Microsoft consoles does not even support NTFS.

In short, both Microsoft and SONY have put all the impediments that were in their hands so that we can NOT use Windows on your console in any way. As we mentioned before, it would be a “bargain” for users to buy a console for 300 euros and turn it into a gaming PC just by installing Windows.