Since the Xbox One's recent release, many gamers have been wondering what to do with their old Xbox 360 games. The new Xbox One is not backwards compatible with the older games and when news of a workaround came out, many gamers were excited to try it out. The workaround was first spotted in a forum post. Per the post, Xbox One owners can add backwards compatibility to their units by enabling developer tools within the console's system. Unfortunately, tinkering with these tools can actually brick your console.
According to the instructions posted online, Xbox One owners simply need to access the developer console on their machines and alter the default sandbox ID of the device to "freezone.reboot." The problem is that changing the sandbox ID to this will actually cause an endless reboot loop. Once the loop starts, the console is rendered useless. The forum post reminds us of earlier pranks that instructed PC owners to delete their system32 folders to make their computers faster.
Microsoft's Larry Hyrb aka. Major Nelson warns in a tweet, "To be clear, there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable."
To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable
— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) December 6, 2013
Many users ask why the developer console was added to the Xbox One in the first place. However, it was included in each Xbox One to help independent game developers build their own games for the console. While the developer tools allow for a huge number of options, there is simply no way to enable backwards compatibility from there.
The good news is that all is not lost for gamers who want to play older games on their new consoles. Both Sony and Microsoft have said that they may consider making older games available for playing in the latest generation consoles in the future. However, this will be done via streaming and not a backwards compatibility fix or patch. This latest hoax just goes to show that people should always be cautious about things they read on the Internet, especially things about hacking or modding an expensive piece of electronics.
