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Comment by gymbeaux | Hacker News Reader

The person I’m replying to make it sound like Xbox Dev Mode came about because Microsoft was tired of trying to keep hackers out, but the reality is Microsoft has kept hackers out. You can’t jailbreak an Xbox One.

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If I recall correctly, Microsoft was about to cripple down the Dev Mode, what caused in the community, what led to increased interest in hacking X1, what made MS back off on their decision, after what the discussions quieten down.

I won't claim Dev Mode is their solution to hacker, but there seems to be some correlation.

I’m not sure why crippling a niche feature would drive people to try to jailbreak the Xbox One. It really is a useless feature unless you are developing an app/game for the Xbox One- then you won’t have to spend however much on a dev kit.

I believe indora has already said why under your initial comment:

>Most of the piracy scene depends on hackers figuring out how to break security so that they can run [SWEET DEMOS](...) and homebrew apps on it

That's definitely the experience I have with modding scene; piracy is rarely the primary goal. Yes, Dev Mode is a niche feature, but it's a feature appealing to the hacker's niche.

Yeah the only issue is that dev mode doesn’t enable would-be hackers to do any of that stuff.

It's literally what it's for though?

And from what I see, stuff like RetroArch can be run on normal console even without Dev Mode nowadays. Heck, you can play NES games directly in Edge browser without any shenanigans.

Things you could do on a jailbroken PS3 or JTAG'd Xbox 360 (besides playing pirated games) != things you can do on an Xbox One with dev mode enabled, including but not limited to: running Linux; viewing and controlling thermal performance of the console; modding games/enabling cheats; theming the UI; playing game discs made for a different region (e.g. PAL); backup game save files (I think this is a given on today's consoles but it was more restrictive back in the day).

Of course it doesn't give you as much power as a jailbreak would, but it gives just enough power to make putting the effort into hacking the console not worth it.

I just don't think there was really anyone who was putting effort into hacking the Xbox One just because they wanted the feature that they now get out of the box- sideloading/running unsigned code in a VERY sandboxed environment that can't run retail versions of games.

yet, valid for january, 2023

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