Microsoft: Don't listen to 4chan ... especially the bit about bricking Xbox Ones Microsoft is warning Xbox One owners to not fiddle with the operating system of their shiny new toy in an attempt to run games written for the previous 360 model. Xbox One 4chan infographic DON'T try this at home, or anywhere else "To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to …
M$ stupidly left the ability to brick a console in an easily accessable "Un"hidden menu.
M$ stupidly refused to make it play old gen 360games. Way to alienate customers! After all, the 360 and the One are PC's at their heart. Worse is that it isnt that much more powerful than the 360 and is par to a mid range gaming PC.
Stupid stupid stupid. On both counts.
And i'm an M$ lover!!!!
When you read the procedure it does not seem very possible to "accidently" enable this option especially step 5.
I can't blame MS for this one...
My car also has a semi-hidden menu that I learned about from a web forum BUT I choose to read up on the items before changing any of them. Blindly following theses kinds of procedures is often a recipe for disaster.
Except that the 360 does not use x86 compatible processors, so is not strictly a PC in the "IBM Compatible" PC manner.
In order to run Xbox 360 games, they would have had to include some processor emulation or run-time translation of the instructions. This is what Transmeta did for their Crusoe processors, and we can see how successful that was.
"people will start returning bricked consoles by the bus load."
Exactly! MS might think they're being "parent-like", wagging their finger at the people daft enough to try this, but this could well backfire as more people bring them back to retail outlets and those outlets all get on the phone to MS. Bang goes the Xmas sales for MS, the retail outlets get pissed off with MS during the busiest time of the year. Next time MS bring something out, those outlets won't buy as much stock.
MS once again turning a shot to the foot into a practised art-form!
More than likely it's a classic MS move. No dev ID needed to be input to put it into dev mode, but a dev id is needed to do anything after putting it in dev mode, including a factory reset. So not bricked, more like password protected with no idea what the password is.
"...but I have no sympathy for people who fall for this stuff."
This was my first reaction as well, however that ignores one very important detail: not everyone who ran into this mess did so by following the instructions on 4chan. What if someone found this on Google (or any other web source) and passed it on? Maybe even with the warning "I have no idea if it'll work!".
The person who would end up trying this wouldn't know it came from 4Chan but from someone he/she might actually trust.
Heck; they might even think "what's the worst that can happen? You reset the device and all is well again".
And that is exactly where things gone wrong.
With my PS3 I can force it to reset itself after which it will check it's USB slots for a mass storage device and then load and apply the firmware present. This is the roughly the same procedure which you need to apply when you're replacing your harddisk.
So if the "old" and "inferior" PS3 can do something so trivial, why can't this "superior next-gen" console?
The blame lies with Microsoft; they failed to supply a back door to get people out of this mess. How hard would it be to insert a ROM which can wipe out the internal HD and then try to download the latest firmware from a specific Microsoft location and apply it?
This post has been deleted by its author
Time the EU stepped in and made vendors warranties cover any non-destructive actions a user might perform. The manufacturers would soon be forced to provide a reset to factory settings facility.
It just isn't reasonable that an expensive piece of equipment can be rendered useless by simply pressing a few buttons on it. Can you imagine having purchased an 80 inch OLED 4K television and it being consigned to the scrapheap because you shouldn't have changed channels in a 2 - 4 - 6 - 8 sequence?
Similarly, my Echostar T101FTA Freeview box was bricked by an OTA update.
Unlike Garmin's response, and despite the thing being way out of warranty, Echostar reflashed it (and upgraded it to the T101FTA+ firmware) for just the cost of me posting it to them - they paid the return postage.
I agree with you on principle, but not in this case. In this case you can't lock it just by pushing buttons. You have to enter the hidden menu (which could be done on accident) then enable Dev tools "Ohh, what does this do?" seems reasonable. Then you get stuck "what goes in here?" so search the internet to try to find out, the internet says "Enables Xbox compatibility" on 1 site and "HOAX!" on every other, you ignore the hoax and follow the instructions.
Should MS now be liable because the end user followed a procedure on the internet? It's like an MMO being liable for a player getting PK'd and losing all their gear because someone said "OMG, you can kill that player quickly by pressing Alt+F4 5 times quickly...."
How would that work?
The way to brick an Xbox in this way requires a whopping three sequences of user input, not just some random buttonmashing. It's relatively easy to do , but only if you ignore the fact that the advice comes from 4Chan (which is a Red Flag in and of itself...).
You cannot legislate against greed and stupidity.....
In it's kind it is not dissimilar to the very old "joke" that urged people to overclock their PC's by flipping the voltage selector on the PSU... ( And yes... people actually did this..with predictable results...)
This is absolutely the wrong way to handle it. Instead of going bawling to Daddy Government, you should be indignant enough to sue the company. There are plenty of hungry lawyers out there who would take a case like this on contingency, especially if there is a chance for it to go class-action.
The government invariably screws things up when they get involved with all kinds of unintended consequences of a now suddenly broad legislation attempting to cover all cases, or the intended consequences of lobbying from those who want their bit cast in or given exemption.
Let the people start their own narrowly-tailored case and self-regulate. If they refuse to take care of themselves then, frankly, they deserve what they get. Once a case is decided, given the fear of litigation is not enough to dissuade future transgressions, it is easy enough to translate into an equally-tailored industry regulation by people who are actually involved, rather than those who look down their noses at everyone, lacking the experience of those being scrutinized, passing laws with reckless abandon leaving others to clean up and suffer the mess.
When you're teaching technophobes or old people how to use a computer, the first thing you demonstrate to them is that no matter what you type or press you can't actually break your computer, if you do something wrong then computer will simply say 'no' but no harm done.
However in this instance it's not correct, it would be easy enough for anyone having a bit of a button bash to access this menu and cause the problem. MS should release a fix for this.
If by computer you mean the hardware then I agree it's very difficult to break via random software actions, but it's not that hard to make the system unbootable and in need of a software rebuild.
On a computer with no install/restore disc or recovery partition then a broken computer is quite easy. It's also quite easy to get stuck in a reboot loop with the wrong driver force installed. So the idea that you can't break a computer by randomly pressing... well... we'll have to agree to disagree.
As for the XB1... it's quite a specific sequence of events that must be performed from the system menu, and I bet the hardware isn't broken, but the software is no longer bootable and you have no recovery media/restore partition... sounds a lot like a computer, although I put forward breaking the XB1 software by random button bashing without instructions is harder than breaking a computer OS.
Microsoft have nothing to worry about, their own research showed that people don't want backward compatibility, hence why its not included.
Of course if MS are just restricting backward compatibility to sell more games and there are enough non to tech savvy folks out there who do want it, enough to try this 'fix' ... then MS have a shit storm on their hands...
Question is, is it deservedly so?
Bit stupid to include an auto brick key sequence though...
quote: "Bit stupid to include an auto brick key sequence though..."
I know a few operating systems that allow the user to make similarly stupid mistakes, e.g.
rm -rf /
format C: /y
I even recall finding the information of the (POKEable) memory addresses to disable the Esc and Break keys on a Beeb Model B, prior to creating and running your standard "10 print 'contentious statement' 20 GOTO 10" type program, although that's not so much a bricking as a caning IIRC ^^;
I'd also be surprised if the console is completely irrecoverable, I think it more likely that MS don't want to hand install/recovery discs out to people so they can subsequently try to install XBox One OS (XBOOS) on a normal x86 PC (and therefore find out how much common codebase there is between XBOOS and Win8). They are going to want a return to base for that kind of fix ;)
...and I think that the only way you tackle said gullibility is to make a (reasonable) point.
However, it's disingenuous and a bit smug when it affects an expensive purchase like this. The big difference with the iPhone 'waterproof' gag was that you would have to be shatteringly, defiantly thick to believe a software update could change the physical properties of your phone. Not falling for that conceit requires no tech knowledge - it's basic critical thinking and common sense. For example, in 2006 I once watched a forum debate in which a disgusted Macbook user was demanding Apple release a software patch to prevent yellowing of the wrist-rest area. You're never going to change that sort of person.
In this case though, they knew Joe Public wouldn't feel a need to research this and would just go ahead and do it - in exactly the same way they retweet urban legends or re-share them on Facebook or whatever, without checking their facts. Do now, think later - it's the social media disease of our time.
I think really we should think about who this gag was meant to attack - dumb consumers, or Microsoft (surely now receiving a lot of support calls about this). Maybe both. Microsoft have surprised me in leaving a logic flaw like this that can be so easily entered into. Hence, it seems targeted at MS but it's the (uninformed) customer that will pay unless MS acquiesces and admits a weakness.
If true, and it does actually brick Xbones, then all I can say is.. "duhhhh srsly wtf". This is awesome. And if the info came from 4chan.. well.. this is just natural selection at work.
Anyone who actually bothered reading up on the nextgen consoles would know damn well that they are not backwards-compatible, MS/Sony have no intention of ever making them so (perhaps the different architecture has something to do with this, no?) - perhaps you shouldn't have traded in your 360 then, eh bellends? Oh noes, you can't play with your dog on call of dooooty? Can't watch tv tv tv sports tv tv any more? Boo-bloody-hoo.
But then most people who have actually managed to brick their beloved Xbone will find out that not everything you read on the internet is actually correct. But maybe that's cos I'm a cynical bastard.. and have a ps4 on order.
Absolutely!
A couple of years ago I had them participating in a nice wholesome game of Mornington Crescent.
Best comment in it:
WAIT WAIT WAIT!
I thought 4Chan was a NewYork Website for Pedos, Sicko and various malcontents.
But apparently, we're all Radio 4 listeners from London.
WTF!!!!!
..... yes, successfully trolled the trollers.
Every story i read about the Xbox one makes it less appealing. I don't know why but I just assumed that the old xbox games would play on the new xbox . This seems to be the standard on other consoles and makes sense as theres a considerable investment in games from the previous generation of console. The ps4 and Wii u play the previous generation console games without any fiddling about.
PS4 backward compatible with previous gens? Hahahahaha
Not at the moment according to Sony, and disc based compatibility isn't currently on the cards... from their own PS4 FAQ:
PlayStation®4 does not have backwards compatibility to play disc-based PS1, PS2, or PS3 games, but we will deliver a new cloud-based gaming service that PlayStation fans can enjoy.
I wouldn't hold my breath for delivery of that.
As for why remove it? We already know the answer to that with the PS3 and 360. So they can charge you again to have a previous gen "retro" version when it is released via PSN/XBL.
Sony started to throw BC out with the PS3. Even my original PS3 only had partial compatibility with games. I had PS2 games that just wouldn't run. So it looks like the XB1 has taken the lead from Sony as far as BC is concerned.
Currently I have no desire to replace my 360 or PS3 or preference for either company. Now I have a gaming capable PC plugged into the TV for games and XBMC the consoles are getting no use.
"To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible"
Failing to answer the only question which matters... WHY?
The idea that they couldn't do it is nonsense. No-one made them choose a weird processor. And they clearly have the resources to make it work if they wanted to.
Backwards compatibility is upgrade lube. Both Sony and MS want to do you dry.
Power PC <> weird, X86 <> weird, X86 <> Power PC
Now to other side
Power PC <> weird, Cell = weird
The Cell was a bit of a beast and I cannot see how you could emulate a processor in the same ball park of performance as your new one. Even if the GPU side is about 10x more powerful.
Yes I don't think the CPU side is that much more powerful on either side but the GPU is massively more powerful.
Remember that the 360 was traditional GPU and CPU with both of similar performance. And the PS3 had a CPU a lot more powerful with a fast but weak GPU, but backed it up with a fast bus and the ability to off load GPU tasks to the CPU.
So neither will PS4 or XB1 be able to support their predecessors games as is.
But expect to see rewrites, but don't expect me to buy them
I saw an IRC transcript on bash.org about that - someone fell for it, then came back and complained. In a masterpiece of trollage, they convinced him he must have hit Alt-F5 by mistake, and he should be sure to hit Alt-F4 this time... which he duly did. Again.
Nearly as good as the 'hunter2' one.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
