With the products I've worked on, (ESX/ESXi, vSphere, ect) the VM always presents virtual hardware. However, player sounds like a rather different creature. Most of the virtualizations we did using vCenter Converter were Win2k3 servers and they all went without a hitch., but like you said, we have a VLK.

Honestly, if an XP virtualization goes even half as smooth as the 2k3 ones did, you're risking nothing by giving it a try.