Mass Effect 3: How to Transfer Your ME 2 Save From Xbox 360 to PC
UPDATE [03/06/2012]: Game Front staff have verified that this works. Follow the instructions carefully, and enjoy!
If you’re hoping to play Mass Effect 3 on PC, but your old Saved Game from Mass Effect 2 is on Xbox 360, then here’s a handy process that allows you to export your 360 save and use it with your PC copy.
While this isn’t official, it’s also not a “crack,” so don’t worry about your account being banned.
- First, you’ll need a flash drive. Insert the drive into your Xbox 360 and let the console format the drive.
- Move your Mass Effect 2 saved game onto the flash drive. Note: moving the file essentially cut-pastes it into the flash drive, rather than copy-pasting it. This means the flash drive will now contain the only copy of your saved game.
- Insert the flash drive into your computer and open it in Windows Explorer.
- Set Windows to display hidden folders by accessing the “Tools” menu, then “Folder Options.” Click the tab that says “View,” then scroll down and select the option that says “Show hidden files, folders, and drives.” Click “Ok.”
- Download the Xbox 360 XTAF Explorer. Extract the .exe from the .zip and run the program.
- In XTAF, go up to “File”, then select “Open Usb Manually” and select the “Xbox360″ folder on your flash drive.
- Click on “Data Partition,” then “Content.” A list of random numbers and letters should appear. Click on each one. Each one should open another list of random characters. Each of those should in turn contain a few files. Open up all these until no more will open.
- Scroll down until you find your Mass Effect 2 Saves, then right click on them and select”Extract.” Save these files to your hard drive.
- Take note of the exact character file, and write it down. It will look something like this: Badass_32_Infiltrator_180910. This is important, and you’ll need it later.
- Download this program. Extract the .exe from the .zip and run it.
- In the application, open the Quick Actions menu and select “Open A Save.” Navigate to the save file you extracted and select it. At the top of the new window that opens, click the “File Contents” tab. There should be a list of all the saves tied to the Campaign Career you extracted, including all Chapter Saves and Auto Saves. From there select the individual save you would like to convert and right click on it, select “Extract File,” and save it to your hard drive.
- Write down the exact name of the save file you are extracting. It would look something like Save_0135.xbsav. You will need that later.
- Register an account on this website, then login.
- Select “My Saves” at the top, then click the “Choose File” button. Navigate to the individual save file you extracted and click “Upload”.
- The file should now appear under “My saves” at the top of the screen. From there, select “PC Export” and the converted file will automatically download.
- The file will download with a name like: SaveExport.pcsav. Now, change the file name so it matches how it was extracted from Modio. In this example, you’d rename the file to Save_0135.pcsav. Make sure you keep the extension as “pcsav”
- Assuming you do not have Mass Effect 2 on your PC, create the following directory: DocumentsBioWareMass Effect 2SaveBadass_32_Infiltrator_180910. That final directory needs to exactly match the title of your character save, what you downloaded from Xbox 360 XTAF Explorer.
- Move the specific save file (in our example Save_0135.pcsav) into that directory.
- Fire up Mass Effect 3. Select “New Game,” then “Import ME2 Character.” You should see your ME2 character there. Follow the wizard. Enjoy!
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50 Comments on Mass Effect 3: How to Transfer Your ME 2 Save From Xbox 360 to PC
Fieryone
On March 5, 2012 at 6:36 pm
It seems the link is Step 11 is broken.
John
On March 5, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Works up until Step 13 for me. No where on Game Front can I find PC Export. Please advise.
thekind2202
On March 5, 2012 at 7:20 pm
PHONY PHONY PHONY
Mark Burnham
On March 5, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Hey guys, thanks for reporting the problem with the link in step 11. We just launched the new homepage today, and it appears we’re having a weird error with outbound links.
For now, the correct link is here:
http://legion.cal24.pl/me2/index.php/site/index
Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.
Mark Burnham
On March 5, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Aha, I fixed it. The link didn’t have the “http://” at the beginning, so it was acting weird.
Fixed.
Mark Burnham
On March 5, 2012 at 10:14 pm
Updated the post with more information, and I also personally verified that this works. Enjoy!
FIsh
On March 5, 2012 at 10:28 pm
Does this work if you don’t have Mass Effect 2 installed? Doesn’t seem to work.
Mark Burnham
On March 5, 2012 at 10:33 pm
@Fish, yup it works. You’ll just need to create this directory on your PC. \Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\Save\Badass_32_Infiltrator_180910\ That last directory will be particular to your character file name, though. That’s the directory that ME3 looks for a ME2 character to import. So even if you don’t have ME2 installed it’ll work.
FIsh
On March 5, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Okay, got it to work. I think I had a modded save that was causing problems.
SmurfEM
On March 5, 2012 at 11:24 pm
How about transferring my ME2 save game to the 360 for my ME3. I don’t understand why I keep seeing only the guides for the 360 to PC and not vice versa lol
Matt
On March 6, 2012 at 4:18 am
Been looking for something like this all over the internet forever. Thank you so much.
Sam
On March 6, 2012 at 7:58 am
I’m guessing but I’m pretty sure you have to own ME2 on the pc in order to do this. Because i have followed every single step and this has not worked. I have tried it 4 times. Making sure I have done every step correctly, and I have but I have no success. Can someone please let me know if this works. Because for me it’s not working at all.
aaron
On March 6, 2012 at 10:55 am
i cant seem sto login, im stuck on step 13
aaron
On March 6, 2012 at 10:58 am
thats weird, i tried with a diff email and it worked
dan
On March 6, 2012 at 11:21 am
the link for the website to convert to pc save is down….
Bob
On March 6, 2012 at 12:13 pm
The link http://legion.cal24.pl/me2/index.php/site/index
Is down. Its spewing sql errors.
Mark Burnham
On March 6, 2012 at 12:49 pm
@Bob Strange, it’s working for me. It’s going a little slow but it loaded after a few CTRL + F5′s. I bet it’s getting hammered with requests today.
Hans
On March 6, 2012 at 1:40 pm
did it, and exported but me3 is still not reading it. Follwed every step
Riffy Divine
On March 6, 2012 at 4:09 pm
The website is down and will be down for god knows how long now.
Riffy Divine
On March 6, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Yeah followed it step by step for the few moments his site was back up. No dice me3 doesn’t see it.
Kev
On March 6, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Yeah the website has reached its hourly limit of connections. I have been trying for 2 hours and no luck.
Jason
On March 6, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Has anyone found an alternate link for step 13?
mate
On March 6, 2012 at 8:45 pm
An error was detected which prevented the loading of this page. If this problem persists, please contact the website administrator.
application/MassEffect/Stream/PC.php [343]:
iconv() [function.iconv]: Detected an incomplete multibyte character in input string
what is the problem?
Brian
On March 6, 2012 at 9:13 pm
http://social.bioware.com/project/4373/&v=discussions
This program will convert your .xbsav to .pcsav. It even keeps the name of the file. You are very welcome.
Brian
On March 6, 2012 at 9:14 pm
Simply open extracted save then save it. Use the drop-down menu to save as .pcsav.
mate
On March 6, 2012 at 9:57 pm
thanks brian!
Jesse
On March 6, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Everything worked perfectly. Except when i go to mass effect 3 and try to import nothing shows up..what may i be doing wrong..? any ideas or common troubles?
kevin
On March 7, 2012 at 12:23 pm
The steps were easy to follow and had a near perfect import. I was able to get into legions site around midnight l.a. time. the only error I had was with my characters appearance which didnt import and I had to recreate his facial features. Needless to say, my character doesn’t quite look like my ME2 Shepard, which kinda bothers me cause it feels like a different “actor” that got tapped to play the same role after they let go the first guy after two seasons haha. but it works and I’m having fun playing.
Pedro
On March 7, 2012 at 5:29 pm
ME3 constantly deletes my save folder
James M
On March 7, 2012 at 10:45 pm
When you open the file in Modio, and go to file contents, You may see more than 1 file. I had
Autosave.xbsav
ChapterSave.xbsav
Save_0007.xbsave
When I only copied Save_0007 nothing showed up, i copied all 3 and placed all 3 in Documents/Bioware/Mass Effect 2/Save/John_12_Soldier_130811_0/ it worked. Hope this helps.
John_12_Soldier_130811_0 will be different for you all of course
Brandon
On March 8, 2012 at 4:19 pm
THANK YOU!
Have been lookin how to do this forever, so i deleted my current ME3 Save so i could Just play my story…lol The default ME3 Story is Terrible… well to me…
Manny
On March 9, 2012 at 3:34 am
I have followed these steps, but in ME3 there is still no ME2 save to import! Please help!
Tozzahen
On March 9, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Yup, just tried it, works like a charm if you follow instructions to the letter.
havok316
On March 9, 2012 at 3:04 pm
I can see the converted character in ME2 in steam, but as my xbox 360 version had the crash site extra content, I cant load in ME2 says I need extra content to play. I did this to test it in ME2. But despite this ME3 still cant find my character. I am assuming this is because of the extra content from xbox?
havok316
On March 10, 2012 at 12:55 am
I finally got it working. Rename the save to save_001 and it works!
rusty rabbit
On March 12, 2012 at 5:35 pm
I need a fix for the other way round PC to xbox..does this work or do I have to try something else?
cjw
On March 12, 2012 at 7:26 pm
Got it working but had to do something extra not shown here.
You need to go through all the steps, then download Gibbed (http://social.bioware.com/project/4373/&v=discussions).
from here open the save file you want to use in Gibbed’s (modified) Mass Effect 2 save editor.
Click the “Raw” tab and look at the “Plot” table for “End Game State”. It should be set to “LivedToFightAgain”. If it is not, then Mass Effect 3 will not detect it.
Mine was set to unspecified so I changed it and it all works fine. Hiope this helps someone.
Credit to Dimension on the BioWare forum (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/107/index/8279186/2#9742868)
Johan
On March 14, 2012 at 10:25 am
ive done all these things now. but one thing im unsure of is the created directory.
also i wonder if this works for other games? say for instance, i play borderlands on xbox360, or Saints row the third, and want to continue playing on PC. does this kind of thing work?
Johan
On March 14, 2012 at 10:28 am
i did mine like this:
C:\Users\myname\Documents\My Games\Bioware\Mass Effect 2\Save\Jane_33_Infiltrator_221105
i did this couse i had a “my games” folder with other saves. but im not sure if i should do one like this instead…
C:\Users\myname\Documents\Bioware\Mass Effect 2\Save\Jane_33_Infiltrator_221105
and/or can it hurt if i have these both just to be sure it finds one of them? or can these folders conflict eachother?
ive not installed the game yet, but i saw this and wanted to prepare for when i have the game.
James
On March 15, 2012 at 7:28 am
I set mine up all according to the directions, i open ME3, New Game, Import ME2 Character, I see my character there I select it, then when I click Import Character it makes a simple little ding noise every time I click it and doesn’t do anything past that.
This must be real simple and i’m just stupid, but anyone out there got anything for me?
Don
On March 16, 2012 at 9:57 am
rarely is a process so compelte and well documented. You made this very very easy thank you!
Brine
On March 16, 2012 at 7:47 pm
It seems that the legion.cal24.pl site is down? I checked at 10:42pm EST.
Zehn
On March 18, 2012 at 9:32 pm
My saves are only saving as .sav files, not .xbsav
Bob
On March 20, 2012 at 5:45 am
Ywah..No idea what the hell step 17 is on about, done everything up till there now im just stuck
Joe
On March 24, 2012 at 3:05 am
Does anyone know if you can copy mass effect 3 save to mass effect 3 on PC?i want to get it on PC instead but halfway through on xbox
Adam
On March 24, 2012 at 10:21 am
I’m stuck on uploading my save file, because i get this error
Invalid save version
Does anyone know the solution for this?
joe
On May 17, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Is there a generic formula to figure out the file name from Step 9? I had it written down on a computer sticky note and I accidentally deleted it!! I know the name, soldier, and date, but what is the “32″ supposed to be for? is there any way to figure it out? Thanks!
Alex
On June 21, 2012 at 8:41 am
This might sound ridiculous, but I cannot seem to transfer the right data from my xbox to my PC. I go through these steps, and the file I extract with XTAF never has the correct Badass_32_Infiltrator_180910 format. Instead, I get Char_Prep.
I am transferring the “ME2 Character Importer” to my USB, then USB to PC. I will try transferring the 4GB ME2 file once I get a large enough usb.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Stolenunder
On June 25, 2012 at 7:55 pm
Well, I can’t say it was incredibly easy, (well, if you follow the steps it is) but I got it in under 5 minutes.
I do have something to say for those not very good at computers on step 17, you said make a directory then listed a huge stream of characters. You should have said: “Make a directory like this: Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\Save\Badass_Infiltrator_0010201201″
Even though I knew it was wrong I first made a directory with that entire stream of character >.<, changed it and made several directories like what was intended and it worked. Also, if you HAVE Mass Effect 2 you'll probably already have a BioWare folder and you'll see in that "Mass Effect 3". Simply create a directory in that named Mass Effect 2, then Save in that, then your characters name, then put the save file in that.
But hey, it works, I would've never though of this, I give this article a 10/10
Andreas
On February 10, 2013 at 1:53 am
Hey Guys,
I got a Problem! Just tried to move the save game from the xbox 360 to the flash drive…..it said, that it is not allowed to transfer this file between profiles….what am i supposed to do?