Three days ago, Larry Hryb, better known as Microsoft's Major Nelson, jumped on Twitter to warn Xbox One owners that the supposed backwards compatibility hack is fake and could brick consoles. There is absolutely no way to make the console backwards compatible no matter what you read on the Internet.
"To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable," he tweeted.
According to 343 Industries, Microsoft eventually wants all Xbox One consoles to have the same functionality as a developer kit, and that's why some of the tools are already accessible on the console. However, this feature is far from ready, and trying to access these tools could put the console in an endless boot loop.
"Both Microsoft and Sony have hinted that they may make classic Xbox 360 and PS3 games available via streaming, but right now the system architecture is too different to allow the consoles to play old games themselves," the studio reports. "As a rule of thumb, these sorts of things are best avoided unless you're absolutely sure of what you're doing, or willing to risk a broken machine."
An image appeared on 4Chan over the weekend that provided six easy steps to enable the developer kit. These instructions included pressing LB, RB, LT, and RT in quick order, selecting the Developer Console, checking the "Enable devkit" box, and changing the sandbox ID. The image was a mere prank, but many Xbox One owners obviously took the instructions as the real deal.
"Microsoft doled out free games to anyone who got a bricked console at retail, but you can bet it won't be quite so generous with people trying to hack their consoles," 343 Industries said.
Due to the Xbox One's new hardware set, it will be unable to play games developed for the Xbox 360, as the older console uses an entirely different architecture. The only real way to play Xbox 360 games on the next generation hardware is to stream them, a feature that will eventually be offered to Microsoft's customers. Sony plans to do the same thing thanks to its Gaikai acquisition.
