Arcade Sushi Quick Tip: Avoiding the Xbox One Backward Compatibility Scam

Today’s Quick Tip may just save your console. You might have heard that Microsoft has included devkit functionality in basically every Xbox One. This makes it incredibly easy to develop games for the box, especially indie games. Of course, access to that functionality was to be strictly monitored and controlled by Microsoft… or so they thought. It actually only took about a week for a user to figure out how to gain access to the developer’s menu with a simple cheat code.

That code is LB, RB, LT, RT…. Yeah. We know we know. It’s really complicated. How could anyone have ever figured this out?

The code needs to be put into the system menu and doing so unlocks the developer console. There’s actually not much you can do here. You can click a checkbox that says “enable devkit” mode, but this doesn’t really grant you many more options other than what you already have… yet. It also allows you to enter a Sandbox ID, which are official game development IDs issued by Microsoft and, for that matter, aren’t really hard to get. That being said, no one out there using this trick has one, or else they wouldn’t think of it as a “trick.”

Microsoft has come out telling people to not do this, and for good reason. Why enabling devkit functionality seems relatively harmless, and for that matter relatively useless right now, fiddling with the Sandbox ID could cause some serious problems. If you put in an unrecognized ID, the system can get into a boot loop, which basically bricks your console making it unable to boot up. Short of replacing or reformatting your Xbox One Hard Drive, your Xbox One will be out of commission.

With this knowledge in hand, a couple mean spirited pranksters have set out to brick as many Xbox One users’ consoles as possible. The image you see above has been circulated across Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and other social media platforms. It suggests that you can use the Xbox One devkit to unlock Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. Long story short, it’s total bupkis. The Sandbox ID mentioned is invalid and will get your console caught in a boot loop. So, whatever you do, do NOT FIDDLE WITH THE SANDBOX ID AREA OF THE DEVELOPMENT CONSOLE! We cannot stress this enough.

The fact that the dev console is so easily unlockable does say good things for the homebrewing community. Expect to see a flood of homebrew Xbox One apps in the near future. If you do choose to unlock these options on your Xbox One, be careful. Arcade Sushi is not responsible if you accidentally turn your Xbox One into a giant paperweight. Leave your system alone, play your next gen games on it, and don't fall for these kinds of scams.