It's well known (or at least we thought it was) and unfortunate fact that neither Microsoft's Xbox One nor Sony's PlayStation 4 are backwards compatible. Definitely a big disappointment when that tidbit surfaced. However, people believe what they want to believe, so when "directions" on how to make a console play your old library of games, people tend to get a bit...well...stupid.
There's an image, seen above, that's been going around the 'net lately. Maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't. Whichever category you happen to fall into, you'd do well to ignore its advice. As you can see, it promises a reality that's anything but. If you want to indulge in fantasy, all you need to do is follow the image's directions, and you'll happily be playing all of your old 360 games on your brand new Xbox One.
In actuality, what will actually happen is that you'll turn your shiny gadget into an expensive paperweight. Those directions will indeed lead you to the console's devkit, but staff from both Microsoft and a third-party developer have advised against screwing around with the menu options.
When a Xbox One owner on Reddit made his discovery of the dev kit menu public, XboxOneDev, who fed consumers and media outlets a LOT of information about the next-gen console's features leading up to its release, warned against it.
"Please don't mess with anything here for the time being, especially the sandbox ID. You risk putting your box into a boot loop."
A staffer from Epic Games backed up XboxOneDev's statement. The developer further warned, "There are many concerns such as privacy, security, stability etc.., that need to be sorted out before we can allow anyone and everyone to simply sideload an app onto their box."
Microsoft itself also issued its own statement on the matter:
"Changing the settings in this menu is only intended for developers for Xbox One, and this alone does not turn the console into a development kit. We strongly advise consumers against changing these settings as it could result in their Xbox One becoming unusable. Customers who have put their consoles into this developer setting can revert by restoring factory defaults under Settings / System, select Restore Factory Defaults."
Despite the various warnings, it still seems as though people are inclined to believe what they want, following the instructions, only to cry foul at doing the equivalant of throwing a $500 piece of hardware in a cesspool.
The exact source of the image isn't known, but it's apprently being spread across a fair amount of boards over at 4chan.
