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Using our brand new Xbox One console… to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii U

Philip Kendall Nov 27, 2013
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That’s right video game fans, as of this week, we now finally have a full crop of next (or should that be “current?”) generation games consoles to play with, bringing with them a whole new era of video game magic! Nintendo’s Wii U has been with us for a while now, PlayStation 4 showed its sleek little face over 10 days ago, and we now finally have an Xbox One to tinker with!

The media centre approach Microsoft has taken with its newest home console may not appeal to all gamers, but even if you’d rather play focus on games than flick between live shows and Dead Rising, there’s no denying that Xbox One has one big advantage over its competitors – its ability to receive, rather than simply output, a signal from another device. Microsoft ideally wants us to use this feature to hook up our cable boxes and make the console our living room hub, but being the gaming nerds that we are and already owning every other console, we decided to do something a little different: play PlayStation 4 and Wii U games on our Xbox One. And it works like a charm.

When our Xbox One arrived at RocketNews Towers, one of our more tech-savvy writers casually mentioned that we could theoretically run our existing and much-loved consoles through it, switching between the machines we wanted to use at will, provided they were all switched on. Despite the chorus of “bullsh*t” that the statement was met with, others agreed that this was indeed possible, and quickly whipped out their smartphones to locate evidence for such a feat online.

Wanting to prove that it could be done, we fired up our giant TV screen and set the Xbox One to purr while we gathered up our Wii U console and cables.

For those of you who are still unsure how this technical wizardry could possibly come to pass, the answer is simple: using the regular old HDMI cables that the Wii U and PlayStation 4 ship with, it’s possible to connect them to the back of the Xbox One, which is in turn plugged into the monitor (or in this case mammoth TV), piping their signals through the box. Using the Xbox One’s picture-in-picture magic, you can actually have the Wii U running in one window while all kinds of other stuff is going on in others.

A bit of fiddling and cursing at metres of cables later and, lo and behold, we had New Super Mario Bros. Wii U running in a window on our new Xbox One, the usual menus surrounding it and running smoothly.

Depending on the applications and games you’re running on your Xbox One, you might notice a slight loss in image quality and the games might not run quite as smoothly as they would when played on just their respective consoles, but if you’re screen sharing and really, desperately want to play on a different console at the same time as someone else is using the Xbox, it’s now completely possible. It’s a little bit overkill, but if you own multiple consoles and gave way to the Xbox One’s huge – and it really is a monster of a box – presence in the living room you’ll definitely want to consider giving this a go.

Check out our photos below for more info!

Original report by Kuzo
Photos: RocketNews24

▼ Our new Xbox One

▼ This isn’t a franken-console we put together – from above the console has two distinct halves, the right side all cooling vents.

▼ Turning the box around, we find its very many ports

▼ The all-important “HDMI in” for your PS4 or Wii U, or whatever else for that matter!

▼ And there it is! New Super Mario Bros Wii U on Xbox One!

▼ Too cutesy? Switch back to your more violent Xbox One title

▼ Mario continues running in the “TV” window. Job done!

▼ If only we had three eyes…