3/17/2026 at 5:29:36 PM
> Whether PC users, our core readership, will be interested in actually emulating Xbox One, looks unlikely. The 2013 system’s game library is largely overlapped in better quality on the PC platform.And this explains why it's stayed unhacked so long. There was very little incentive to hack the system when the games are all playable on a PC. Pirates, cheaters, archivists, and hackers could just go there. Microsoft's best security measure was making something nobody cared enough about to hack in the first place
by autoexec
3/17/2026 at 5:45:13 PM
The other major incentive for hacking the console Microsoft removed was for the first time on a modern mainstream home console to allow side loading of homebrew code/emulators etc. The console supported a developer mode that allowed side loading of third party applications, so folks could get emulators and other traditionally "banned" content on the console through an officially supported route.There's a great presentation by Tony Chen on the Xbox One's security features:
> https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/
Examples of the kinda software you can put on the Xbox One in developer mode:
by giobox
3/18/2026 at 5:20:43 AM
"side loading", I know this term is the one used but I think should be pushed back against with just using the standard "installing"/"install". It makes the control point clearer and (should be) unsettling when you can't "install" software on hardware you own.by layoric
3/18/2026 at 10:00:39 AM
It's a great point. As a geek I used to think those details don't matter, but it turns out language shapes society and how humans think way more than I understood.We need to catch up on this because the people who know how to use language for propagandizing don't have the best intentions in mind.
But using the original term is not enough. We need to combat their word-twisting by upping them. We need a way to convey "their way of installing stuff by default is inferior and an attack on liberty".
Something like:
- direct install: installing as we always did
- caged install: installing through a locked store.
Maybe somebody better at marketing can find a good way to do this. In fact, we should have a whole site and community to organize together and shift the narrative on all nerdy things: formats, open web, DRM, patents, etc.
We have been weak on these points for so long because we care much more about solving tech problems than selling them. But openness is being eaten away under our noses. Has been for years.
by BiteCode_dev
3/18/2026 at 11:09:50 AM
Sideloading should be called installing, and installing from the store should be called jailloading.by shaky-carrousel
3/18/2026 at 12:15:22 PM
Jailoading is quite catchy, although it does have a "Micro$oft" and "Microslop" feel. Like more an insult than a word made to be used daily.by BiteCode_dev
3/18/2026 at 8:03:40 PM
[dead]by vdvebjrc
3/18/2026 at 1:50:57 PM
I think sideloading is a fine term when it is a consumption device. No one buys a video game console expecting to be able to install anything they want. As a matter of fact, there is an argument that restricting what can be installed is a feature. By maintaining control of the hardware, they can eliminate entire classes of problems that someone might run into. That is to say, when you let your kid play on the switch, you don't want to have to troubleshoot how they got the thing borked from installing malware.That said, I do think words matter and I always point out that the reason these systems are locked down is because of Digital Restrictions Management. I also refuse to buy anything from Sony because they changed their mind about letting me install linux on the PS3.
I just think side loading is good way to describe installing custom software on a non-general purpose computer, and that not every computer needs to be general purpose. It's significantly better than the previous terms of hacking, cheating, stealing, and voiding your warranty.
by dec0dedab0de
3/18/2026 at 10:49:50 AM
Agree. I recommended Stremio to a friend on an iPhone and it turns out it has to be "side loaded". My response is "so you can't install it?"by Intermernet
3/18/2026 at 8:02:12 PM
[dead]by vdvebjrc
3/19/2026 at 6:09:45 PM
I tend to draw a distinction - side loading usually infers a supported but not mainstream way of installing applications - this xbox for example cannot side load without you paying a small fee to enable the developer mode, and the vast majority of software will be obtained via retail discs or the Xbox store. It's not a generic "install" mechanism native to the out of the box experience for the console - you have to do some extra work for this avenue to open.When I think of "install" I think of general purpose OSes which can install software from almost any source no questions asked, or use the native out of the box support for software installations.
The similar distinction exists with android and iOS, and is probably why the term is popular in those communities too.
If nothing else, the term sideload makes very clear on platforms with native appstores or locked down distribution channels (consoles, phones...) that the install did not come from the native channels. Installs from game discs or the xbox store are inherently different from developer mode software and using the same term "install" for both disguises this fact.
by giobox
3/18/2026 at 9:48:31 AM
Yeah I listened to a podcast with Corey Doctorow (inventor of the term "enshittification") and he made this point quite well, to the point where I have completely removed "side loading" from my vocabulary. It's installing software on the computer I own.by markovs_gun
3/18/2026 at 1:43:40 AM
I'm very much of the opinion that PS3's linux support massively delayed its exploitation. And not just because it provided a path for homebrew/linux.A lot of the early hacking focused on trying to breach the hypervisor from otheros. The hypervisor turned out to be quite secure, people smashed their heads against it for years until it finally fell to a memory glitching attack.
But turns out it was so much easier to just attack gameos with a USB exploit. The hypervisor did nothing to prevent it, and would then just decrypt games for you (because gameos was trusted)
by phire
3/17/2026 at 5:53:08 PM
You are 100% correct but they started clamping down on people using Dev mode strictly for emulators and homebrew. So here we are.by philistine
3/17/2026 at 10:45:58 PM
In their defense, they clamped down following lobbying (and pressure) from Nintendo IIRC.Part of me also thinks that Microsoft were so forward with offering what was basically a test kit because they were confident in their security.
by rustyhancock
3/18/2026 at 12:06:06 AM
Why Nintendo? Far as I know, they've never released anything on an xbox console.by extraduder_ire
3/18/2026 at 12:13:22 AM
Nintendo doesn't want users emulating Nintendo systems in the Xbox is my guess.by akramachamarei
3/18/2026 at 5:04:12 AM
Nintendo is notoriouslg very aggressive with their IP. I bet they weren’t happy you could emulate a switch or something.by ornornor
3/18/2026 at 5:16:14 AM
No, and theyd like to keep their games off of any Xbox.by wodenokoto
3/17/2026 at 6:55:09 PM
This is what killed Linux support on PS as well, Sony was disappointed with what was being done with PS2Linux, instead of indie titles.Hence why PS3 Other OS no longer did hardware acceleration.
by pjmlp
3/17/2026 at 7:11:59 PM
The PS3 was incredible value dollar-to-flop, given that it was sold at a loss. This resulted in universities and other research institutes buying them en masse to create supercomputer clusters. Naturally buying thousands of consoles but not a single game puts sony in a difficult position. Although I think it's sad the hardware got locked down in later revisions, I fully understand why they did it.by beAbU
3/17/2026 at 7:20:43 PM
The US Department of Defense went quite a bit further. They created the Condor Cluster in 2010 which was comprised of 1760 PS3s. At the time it was placed 33rd worldwide for a supercomputer.https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
by mschild
3/18/2026 at 12:09:20 AM
At the time, entire PS3s were cheaper than what it cost to get the CPU from IBM.by extraduder_ire
3/18/2026 at 2:49:25 PM
they couldn't have gone for 1776 of them?by widowlark
3/18/2026 at 12:16:03 AM
at some point it was claimed that the reason sony removed the ability to run linux was because, literally, Saddam Hussein (maybe not) was using them to pilot jets or somesuch.by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 1:49:45 AM
I haven't looked, but I am pretty sure that Saddam was dead before the ps3 launched. At the very least, his 2003/2004 ouster was before the ca 2007ish (I think) launch date.by b00ty4breakfast
3/18/2026 at 8:13:50 AM
Ok, I looked it up; Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006 and the ps3 launched on Nov 11, 2006 in Japan and Nov 17, 2006 in the US. So, technically, he was alive for the launch.by b00ty4breakfast
3/18/2026 at 10:54:20 AM
That factoid has the ingredients for an awesome conspiracy theory ;-)by Intermernet
3/18/2026 at 11:12:48 AM
in case you don't check up again, i did find this https://web.archive.org/web/20041120084657/http://arrakis.nc...And in my mind the whole story was a publicity stunt, considering the political wind at the time and the place that broke the story; which was then quoted at me in college.
by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 11:00:33 AM
I said the word claimed. in the past. And it was more like: thousands of PS2 because sony/japan marked them dual use because they "were so powerful." So probably astro-turfed or even native advertising (considering the place that "broke" the story.)buuuuut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster the US government went ahead and did make a supercomputer out of PS3s.
anyhow thanks for helping me confirm my memory is functioning perfectly.
ETA: https://web.archive.org/web/20041120084657/http://arrakis.nc... probably where this "wacky" idea came from...
by genewitch
3/17/2026 at 7:40:09 PM
I would be curious to know more precise numbers. My intuition suggests that when Sony sells millions of them, the number diverted for non-gaming purposes is maybe thousands or tens of thousands.by AlphaAndOmega0
3/17/2026 at 9:32:17 PM
Nearly 90 million units by the time it was discontinued, but I'm not sure how many were sold at the point they removed Linux support.by mr_toad
3/17/2026 at 8:25:46 PM
The marketing win of being able to say "these are so poweful, the military literally uses them in supercomputers" certainly more than makes up for a hundredth of a percent of consoles having a zero attach rate.by monocasa
3/18/2026 at 8:07:43 PM
[dead]by vdvebjrc
3/18/2026 at 1:58:45 PM
> Although I think it's sad the hardware got locked down in later revisions, I fully understand why they did it.The PS3 was coincidentally locked down after it was jail broken (broken in Jan, otheros patched out in Mar.
by ChoGGi
3/17/2026 at 8:02:59 PM
Linux on playstation was a play by Sony not to have customs like on a toy but as a more favorable computer merchandise. They didn't care.by Keyframe
3/17/2026 at 10:54:03 PM
Linux on Playstation was the final hubris of Ken Kutaragi to have his insane CPU design take over computing. Kutaragi envisaged the PS3 becoming a standard hardware platform similar to the PC but fully controlled by Sony. That was their goal with the PS3, they said so themselves time and time again. The second Kutaragi was removed from power over at Playstation, they closed the Other OS function.It was the last time that a Japanese company made a fundamentally Japanese move.
by philistine
3/18/2026 at 4:10:59 AM
> fully controlled by Sony.And Toshiba and IBM, it was a three-way collab. There was even a second-generation Cell (PowerXCell 8i) released in IBM Q Series blade-servers.
by Nursie
3/18/2026 at 5:57:08 AM
Yeah. pretty much PowerPC part two. PowerPC the business move, like the oroginal one.by Keyframe
3/18/2026 at 10:42:56 AM
> It was the last time that a Japanese company made a fundamentally Japanese move.What do you mean by this?
by Antibabelic
3/18/2026 at 3:30:04 PM
It's certainly an extremely bizarre and false statement. Curious what he meant as well.by Andrex
3/17/2026 at 8:04:31 PM
Nope, that was with YA BASIC.by pjmlp
3/17/2026 at 8:26:37 PM
There were different customs for different countries targetted with different tactics.Ya basic was only one front in that war.
by monocasa
3/17/2026 at 10:12:33 PM
Sure, if we disregard that PS2 Linux came almost two years later, was only sold via Internet, added an extra 500 euros on top, although it got discounted into 300 euros at the end of PS2 lifetime.I own one such kit.
by pjmlp
3/17/2026 at 11:10:13 PM
That doesn't factor into it, because the tariffs, bans, etc they were trying to circumvent weren't dependent on the software shipping with the device in that case, nor the separate price of the software, nor were they even necessarily primarily targeting Europe.Each of these schemes had different sets of regulatory checkboxes they were trying to tick, and so had very different end products.
by monocasa
3/18/2026 at 7:04:36 AM
Sure as you wish, I was a PlayStation fanboy back then, since Yaroze, and surely remember YA BASIC for PS2 and Other OS for PS 3, being the only ones.Yaroze and PS2 Linux never had anything to do with tariffs.
by pjmlp
3/19/2026 at 2:23:18 AM
Not sure where you're coming from on that since it was a well-known and somewhat mocked at the time fact when Sony argued with UK customshttps://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/playstation-2-is-...
by Keyframe
3/17/2026 at 6:22:30 PM
I've seen this argument, but I strongly suspect that it's a cope argument. "We couldn't get in... because... we didn't care to! Even though we've hacked literally every other object on the planet just because."The proof in the pudding of this will be when the Nintendo Switch 2 reaches 2035 with no cracks. That's my prophecy; that this time around the cat actually will catch the mouse. Between NVIDIA's heavily revised glitch-resistant RISC-V security architecture and Nintendo's impeccable microkernel, there's nowhere left to hide. DRM may turn out to have been a very slow long battle to "victory," not a "this will always be defeated."
by gjsman-1000
3/17/2026 at 8:27:47 PM
I have my doubts. I suspect that Nvidia have made mistakes.Anyway, situations like the one you describe are one to be solved by legislation requiring certain devices be sold as open devices that put power in the hands of the owner.
by selectively
3/18/2026 at 12:22:47 AM
my nintendo switch is "rootable" by shorting two pins in the controller interface, with a previously set up SD card inserted with the homebrew bootloader.My PS3 and PS4 were both jailbroken/rooted. I don't remember the ps3 routine, but the PS4 was loading the "system -> help" page while connected to a ESP32 wifi AP running a simple web server that replied to requests with the jailbreak for PS4.
I give it about a year, especially if nintendo has to change the specs or otherwise tampers with customer expectations. there's bound to be some way to reload firmware on a "dead" device without pulling chips, and that's all it takes.
by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 1:34:20 PM
The shorting two pins is a heavy oversimplification of what happened.The two pins were installed by design from Nintendo to activate the Tegra RCM mode. RCM mode meanwhile has a USB buffer overflow which is the real bug.
In modern NVIDIA chips, this RCM mode no longer exists. The new recovery modes meanwhile are running across multiple physically separate CPUs verifying each other (glitch one, the other notices), all running formally verified firmware written in SPARK (the thing you use for nuclear reactors and avionics).
As for the OS itself, according to a maintainer who rewrote the kernel twice for open source, it has zero bugs. None. The microkernel is tiny, has no drivers, and almost no attack surface. This is born out by WebKit exploits being a dime a dozen on Switch, but all of them are useless.
by gjsman-1000
3/18/2026 at 1:59:18 PM
> In modern NVIDIA chips, this RCM mode no longer exists. The new recovery modes meanwhile are running across multiple physically separate CPUs verifying each other (glitch one, the other notices), all running formally verified firmware written in SPARK (the thing you use for nuclear reactors and avionics).I guess that, when you absolutely want zero surprises, Ada is the language of choice.
by rbanffy
3/18/2026 at 6:28:13 PM
> it has zero bugs. None.This is hyperbole. We have 1 switch that routinely "won't power on" without a ritual of button holding & timing. My original switch used to hard lock, but i stopped trying to play the sorts of games that were causing the OS to crash.
Both of these disprove the zero bugs claim, unless we move the goalposts.
by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 7:51:20 PM
That's obviously hardware failure, loose solder connections, or RAM failure, not bugs. For that matter, I was talking very specifically about kernel security bugs in context, not any bugs someone could experience.That's like saying "I plugged in my phone's charging cable, and unplugged it, 20,000 times, and now it's sometimes showing the charging symbol inconsistently, obviously a software bug proving the charging circuit driver has a security flaw."
by gjsman-1000
3/18/2026 at 12:11:07 AM
When you extrapolate out the political economy consequences of your hypothesis being correct the future looks very dark indeed. If you can make an unhackable game console it should be obvious to people on this site what sorts of dystopias you could also create.by ls612
3/18/2026 at 12:24:03 AM
unhackable subscription ignition interlock device?by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 12:31:36 AM
unhackable brain-computer interface required for most daily activities (like phones are today) and with a killswitch "for the public safety" and 24/7 cloud monitoring. Obviously this is pretty out there science fiction today but will it remain so in a century? And if it doesn't, what kinds of political systems are likely to dominate? What will happen to those political systems that for one reason or another decline this capability? I leave these questions as an exercise for the reader.by ls612
3/18/2026 at 3:24:09 AM
Before we even get there, within 5-7 years new PCs will be Xbox-like, locked down devices. Only approved OS and apps may be installed, as it is a felony to run an OS that doesn't meet federal and state KYC ID requirements or even own a copy of one without a license, and no PC manufacturer wants the liability risk of being found complicit in the commission of such crimes. General purpose computing will be a thing of the past for the masses (who didn't really want it anyway). Server hardware will be exempt from these requirements, but to purchase it you need a D-U-N-S number and a statement of intended use in the purchase agreement.Even if it were possible to find a vulnerability in the hardware, doing so without attracting the attention of law enforcement will be profoundly difficult, as Windows sends telemetry back to Microsoft about every instruction that runs on your hardware. Apple will claim to be more privacy-focused, at least for a year or two, but the M9 chip's NPU will just perform local inference on your activity and report you to Apple and the FBI if it detects attempts to break security.
by bitwize
3/17/2026 at 6:59:43 PM
Well, and these systems are also designed with ratchet-type measures in place from the get-go, where holes are plugged, fuses are burned, and newly released titles will only decrypt/run on the latest OS.So even if Switch 2 doesn't make it all the way to 2035 with zero cracks, there's a strong likelihood that any exploits found will be short-lived.
by mikepurvis
3/17/2026 at 7:42:10 PM
Which incentivizes people to hold on to exploits for as long as possible, ideally past the console life cycle, just to make sure it can be used, which already is a thingby joseda-hg
3/18/2026 at 3:31:48 PM
2035 for Switch 2 piracy to get started sounds nice, as someone invested in the platform.Maybe we should think about this like the concept of public domain. Locked down for X years in order to protect the artist, then opened up for everyone to benefit society.
by Andrex
3/18/2026 at 10:22:24 AM
Now if only Sony would let us even have a smidgen of our own code on our Playstations. But nope, Sony would rather gatekeep that one to Hell and back.Instead, they keep stripping stuff off the console. I'm still so annoyed that PS5 doesn't even have an integrated web browser anymore (especially trying to troubleshoot network issues from the console itself).
But hey, Sony can leave bullshit exploit vectors open like PPPoE clients on the console itself (why? just use a router?)...
by kotaKat
3/17/2026 at 9:44:39 PM
There is this general vibe online that the newer generation xboxen are either bad, worse than playstation, or a straight up failure.My series x, combined with gamepass, is by a very large margin the most at-home-entertainment bang I have gotten for my buck.
Before then I had what could be regarded as a "vintage" gaming PC: 1st gen i7 (nehalem?), a gts 450 and some amount of ram. An upgrade (read: full replacement) was desperately needed. This was in the middle of the crypto gpu boom, so a decent GPU alone would've wiped my budget. I settled for an xbox as it was cheaper than a ps5.
I've always seen myself as part of the pc master race, and thought consoles to be very limited. But man, it just worked, the games just worked, and gamepass made it all a total steal.
Even now, when our 3 month old baby is settled for the night, me and my wife's preferred entertainment is a session of bg3 over watching tv.
by beAbU
3/18/2026 at 12:17:26 PM
> gamepass made it all a total stealDoing the math i can't find this to be true. As some one that has honed my taste in games, and have a large steam library, I don't spend as much money on games as game pass cost.
by bakies
3/18/2026 at 12:25:36 PM
With the recent price changes the calculus changes for sure. Even though I live in Europe now, my subscription is stil set up in South Africa. So I used to pay the equivalent of €10 per month for Ultimate, now it's €18/mo.I think if I were forced to relocate my subscription and pay the full real price (€30/mo), I will probably cancel and buy a €90 game evey quarter or something.
by beAbU
3/18/2026 at 4:22:48 PM
I ended up cancelling gamepass after the subscription increase. I already own most of the games they offer, so it was really the odd AAA or indie release I'd play on it.Indie games are cheap and most AAA titles go on sale within six months, which is fine because I usually don't play them day of launch.
Then there's the issue with gamepass games not working on my system. It's the only platform where I've had consistent issues getting games to run. Even free games like fortnite, were bundled with the wrong anticheat.
by mywittyname
3/17/2026 at 11:44:40 PM
Series X is a premium experience. Walmart delivered one for $350 at 4am with Diablo 4. Still feels like robbery a couple of years later.by wileydragonfly
3/18/2026 at 11:04:02 AM
> when our 3 month old baby is settled for the nightSeemed a credible comment till that point! (/s)
Congrats :-)
by ezst
3/18/2026 at 12:27:21 PM
Thanks, we are definitely in the 'if it's this easy we should have another one!'. She's been a treat so far and from what I've heard from other parents, very easy.by beAbU
3/17/2026 at 6:11:53 PM
This is true, but it is also true that the Xbox One's security architecture and mitigations were ahead of its time. It would've taken a while to hack even with stronger incentives to hack it.by Retr0id
3/17/2026 at 8:01:38 PM
True, I'm not trying to diminish this guy's efforts to defeat all the obstacles MS put in his way.by autoexec
3/17/2026 at 6:32:22 PM
>The 2013 system’s game library is largely overlapped in better quality on the PC platform.I get what this essentially means, but for those of us with a certain amount of love of language (or pedantry), it's fascinating to try and parse this literally because I don't quite think it works as intended.
Clearly the intended meaning is something like eclipsed in quality. And it may be overlapped in the sense that the same games are separately available on PC. But overlap isn't a relation of quality; quality is generally better or worse when it's comparative. So it's like a smushed together way simultaneously saying the selection of games on Xbone overlaps with what's available on PC and is also better quality on PC.
by glenstein
3/17/2026 at 7:03:53 PM
It's clear it means that there's a large overlap in titles and they are available in better quality on the PC platform?by inertiatic
3/17/2026 at 7:24:48 PM
I already acknowledged that part several times?by glenstein
3/17/2026 at 8:12:47 PM
Yes, but the grandparent poster and I would agree that the parse is not that ambiguous/the meaning is easily inferred. The sentence states that the library is overlapped _and_ that overlap is available in better quality: it may seem contrived, but it reads as a rather natural collapse of an implicit conjunction to me.by Philpax
3/18/2026 at 8:11:48 PM
[dead]by vdvebjrc
3/17/2026 at 8:04:09 PM
I think they could have used some punctuation.examples:
The 2013 system’s game library is largely overlapped, in better quality, on the PC platform.
The 2013 system’s game library is largely overlapped (in better quality) on the PC platform.
by autoexec
3/17/2026 at 6:42:11 PM
One thing PC does not have are the Xbox/Xbox 360 updated games. Microsoft did a great job of making the old games playable on Xbox One with better resolution, performance, etc. It would be nice to play the exclusive games of those consoles on PC through this.by louhike
3/17/2026 at 6:56:21 PM
It might be coming as per GDC news, lets see.by pjmlp
3/17/2026 at 11:02:25 PM
They're not going to bring over Xbox 360 emulation. This thing is dependent on the specific CPU and GPU of the Xbox One and Series consoles. They've lost their appetite for emulation and have reassigned the whole team dedicated to it.by philistine
3/18/2026 at 7:01:21 AM
They announced a new effort at GDC.by pjmlp
3/18/2026 at 8:14:52 PM
[dead]by vdvebjrc
3/17/2026 at 8:28:43 PM
Yeah, you couldn't be more wrong here. The exact same people who thoroughly destroyed the 360 badly wanted to attack this system - they were just outgunned.by selectively
3/17/2026 at 9:13:48 PM
The security was way better with the Xbox One, but also no one cared about the Xbox one. The 360 was the last successful Xbox.by Gigachad
3/17/2026 at 5:38:12 PM
There was a time when it would have been a hot target, but everything the original modded Xbox could do could be done easier elsewhere.by bombcar
3/17/2026 at 6:07:36 PM
I know that's been dropping my level of interest for hacking consoles farther and farther. Why hack a console when it has almost no exclusives, even fewer of which I personally care about, and having a real computer hooked to a TV is no longer weird or difficult? I could fight to put an emulator on some locked down console or I can just install an emulator for almost everything ever made in like 10 minutes on my Steam Deck, so the choice is pretty obvious.by jerf
3/17/2026 at 5:45:46 PM
Most of what was done on an original modded Xbox can be done on a retail stock Xbox One/Xbox Series with the exception of pirated Xbox games. Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) is just in the Xbox store, emulators and homebrew can be setup through dev mode with a little effort and $20. It's really just pirated versions of Halo 5 and a few others missing.by chocochunks
3/18/2026 at 3:31:59 AM
Pretty much, if you provide what people want elsewhere you will reduce the demand to crack the original system.One of the reasons the Wii U was slow to be hacked was because Android TV boxes had come along plus things like Ouya/Nvidia shield, and it basically took away a lot of demand for a console turned into TV unit to use hacked software.
It still happened but not so quiclkly. Not like the original Wii which didnt really have much similar to it at the time.
by HerbManic
3/17/2026 at 6:03:32 PM
Also getting a dev account and loading up RetroArch/emulators in general is trivial. Best use of an Xbox one for sure. Well documented and exploited at this point.Not the same as emulating its titles, but a lot of interest in the Xbone/series line (outside of actual console users) is the dev accounts. So I imagine a lot more effort went there first.
by Forgeties79
3/17/2026 at 6:46:29 PM
I was vaguely aware this is possible although the "sign-up for a dev account and boot it in dev mode all the time", even if free, was still enough of a barrier that I haven't done yet. I'm hoping this hack eventually leads to a simpler "one-click" way to run emulation, home brew and mods while still maintaining full original game and media playing functionality.Then I'll finally hook up the XBOne I have again and put it to some use on the downstairs TV. I already have a 'retired' PS4 filling similar role on the upstairs TV (although it must stay offline to remain 'liberated').
by mrandish
3/17/2026 at 6:10:30 PM
How is this the first I’m hearing of it? Looks like I finally have a reason to own an x-box, aside from the best version of Perfect Dark (the HD release of the original with modern controls, I mean) being on the 360.by genthree
3/18/2026 at 12:27:19 AM
Perfect Dark works on newer Xboxes too. For Xbox One X and Series X it runs at 9x the res of the 360 version. It's included in Rare Replay which also includes Goldeneye 007 if you get it digitally.by chocochunks
3/17/2026 at 7:38:59 PM
They used to charge too but now it’s free. I got mine set up after about 30min of work a few weeks ago just need to actually load it up now. It’s tedious and you have to share your personal ID but it’s not difficult.by Forgeties79
3/17/2026 at 7:27:04 PM
This is not the reason, the reason is that the security is very strong. It's explained in the video.by Thaxll
3/17/2026 at 6:54:04 PM
The Xbox One has been emulated though (well not emulated, it's a compatibility layer like Wine). Before this hack, there was Collateral Damage. We were able to dump games with the exploit.Minecraft: Xbox One Edition (the Legacy version) was of keen interest to our community as it would be playing LCE natively on a PC if you used a compatibility layer which never happened before.
So a few of my LCE cult friends contributed to WinDurango which was pretty much dead before they joined, and got Minecraft: Xbox One Edition to work.
Of course, you'd ask "why don't you just play Minecraft on PC normally?" Legacy Console Edition has so many minute differences and details that it's impossible to discuss all of them--things as big as the Minigames and as small as the mipmaps.
And then LCE source code from 2014 got leaked and that had a native PC port. Oh well.
by bor_real
3/18/2026 at 2:32:13 PM
> The Xbox One has been emulated though (well not emulated, it's a compatibility layer like Wine).The parenthetical is not needed. It is OK to call Wine an emulator. The "Wine Is Not an Emulator" thing came about later and was essentially a marketing change. How it came about is interesting.
The first suggestion to change the meaning of the word from a shortening of "windows emulator to the not an emulator backronym was in 1993 over concern that "windows emulator" might run into problems with Microsoft trademarks, but no action was taken.
Over time the not an emulator usage became an accepted alternative. The Wine FAQ in late 1997 for example said:
The word Wine stands for one of two things: WINdows
Emulator, or Wine Is Not an Emulator. Both are right.
Use whichever one you like best.
This is release 981108 of Wine, the MS Windows emulator.
This is release 981211 of Wine, a free implementation of
Windows on Unix.
1. Wine was useful for more than just running Windows binaries on Unix. It could also be used as a library you could link with code compiled on Unix as an aide to porting Windows programs to Unix.
2. Hardware emulators that emulator old systems like GameBoy or Apple II had become popular. Many people were only familiar with that kind of emulator, and those (the emulators, not the people!) tended to be slow.
That was fine when your emulator is running on a machine with a clock speed 300x that of the machine you are emulating and that has a much more efficient CPU, but when you tried to use a hardware emulator for something comparable to your machine it was usually unbearably slow.
People only familiar with such hardware emulators might see Wine described as a Windows emulator and think it was doing hardware emulation and not even give it a try. By dropping calling it an emulator Wine sidestepped that problem.
by tzs
3/17/2026 at 10:04:41 PM
> Microsoft's best security measure was making something nobody cared enough about to hack in the first placeMaybe that's what they're trying to achieve with Windows as well.
by kleene_op
3/18/2026 at 12:28:50 PM
No it doesn’t explain it. This is legitimately a difficult target. Did you watch the talk?The people that MS hired to make and break this were top notch, and there is definitely incentive to maintain control over a content platform. This dude has been at this for /years/. I’ve been a fly on the wall on all sides to observe this.
There has been a lot of interest in underground / pirate communities to hack this, but that’s not the only reason why people hack things.
by Kiboneu
3/17/2026 at 6:54:04 PM
Maybe cheaters want to cheat somewhere nobody else cheats. Idk if these games do online cross platform nowadays.by zadikian
3/18/2026 at 12:29:09 AM
Helldivers 2 is cross platform (pc, sony, xbox all in same game at same time, doesn't matter who "hosts.") So it does exist in practice.by genewitch
3/18/2026 at 2:10:08 AM
Definitely there's some truth to itby aizk
3/17/2026 at 6:45:17 PM
the main value is that it's way easier to make an emulator of a console than some point-in-time windows PC.by foobiekr