Xenia XLink Kai Setup
XLink Kai is a multi-platform and peer-to-peer LAN tunneling service which enables users to play local area network and ad-hoc multiplayer games on their consoles online with people all over the world. XLink Kai was first released in 2003, supporting the Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube at launch, with PSP, PS3, Xbox 360 and others support arriving soon after.
As of XLink Kai release 7.4.46 the Xbox 360 emulator Xenia's netplay canary fork (build #263 or newer) is now supported allowing for Xenia users to play system-link titles against other Xenia users around the world!
XLink Kai Home Page - https://teamxlink.co.uk
XLink Kai Status Page - https://status.teamxlink.co.uk/
Popular on XLink Twitter Bot - https://twitter.com/PopularOnXLink
Team XLink Official Discord - https://discord.gg/UyyjNpa
Supported Games List - https://www.teamxlink.co.uk/supported-games
Current State
XLink Kai + Xenia support is experimental and only available on Windows.
What works:
- Xenia users playing against other Xenia users.
What does not work:
- Xenia users and Xbox 360 users playing together.
Supported Games
There are 216 games with the system-link feature for Xbox 360. To see if the game you want to play is supported please check the supported games page as well as Xenia netplay's compatibility list.
Installing XLink Kai
Follow the installation guide for your Operating System:
Network Configuration
Xenia netplay support in XLink Kai is still experimental and as such the setup process is a bit... bespoke.
Installing NPCAP
Due to licensing issues XLink Kai ships with WinPCAP which unfortunately is not compatible with loopback adapters. To solve this you will need to install NPCAP. Version 1.31 is known to be stable.
During installation the default options are fine, just keep clicking Next until finished.
Run kaiLoopbackBridge
- Open Windows Explorer and navigate to
C:\Program Files (x86)\XLink Kai\ - Find
kaiLoopbackBridge64.exe, right click, Run as Administrator - Read the warning, press any key to continue.
- Select Xenia as the emulator type
- The loopback adapter will now be configured automatically.
- Close kaiLoopbackBridge. We will use it again later.
Installing and Configuring Xenia
Xenia setup is quite simple, read the Quickstart Guide to get set up.
Configuration settings
Once you run Xenia at least once a configuration file will be created in the same directory as the Xenia exe.
- Open the Xenia configuration file with a text editor. This file is usually named
xenia-canary-netplay.config.toml - Find the
xlink_kai_systemlink_hackoption and set it totrue - Save and close the config file.
- Start Xenia
- From the top menu select Netplay then Network interfaces then select the XLink Kai Loopback Xbox 360 interface
Thats it!
Playing a game on XLink Kai
Since Xenia netplay and XLink Kai are not able to communicate with each other directly (yet), kaiLoopbackBridge is used as a "bridge" between them.
- Start XLink Kai and log in
- Start kaiLoopbackBridge, navigate through the prompts and keep it open the entire time you are playing. After a few seconds XLink Kai will see a Xbox console under the Metrics tab
- Start Xenia and start your game. Xenia must not be running before you start kaiLoopbackBridge.
- Navigate to a game arena and play!
Finding players
If you are having trouble finding other players to game with please join our Discord chat and use the various console-specific channels. There are also several fan-run discords that host regular game nights.