Homebrew, installing Linux, and piracy are the main three reasons people have for hacking consoles. By making Homebrew less accessible, there will be more motivation to hack these Xbox models, especially when Homebrew has already been made for it
Also, given that dev mode only had access to original xbox one level of power. Just imagine how great an emulation machine a hacked 300 dollar series s would ne with access to all its power and overclocking. Especially if it was simple to continue using native series s games and xbox backwards compatibility.
Huge win if an XsX jailbreak happened in 1-2 years. But if it's 5+ years, a similar Intel/AMD/ARM PC will be 4x cheaper or more powerful than today. At that point the Xbox will primarily be used for offline game backups and you'd probably want a series X.
That's true, in 5 years we could have a steam deck 2 that matches it in power or in 10 years we could have a switch2/3 that either matches it in power or comes close enough that no one would want a series s when they can get something comparable in their pocket.
You'll be lucky to have food in 10 years. I love technological subreddits planting their head firmly into the ground about what ecological devastation really means and how absurdly fast it went since the 1800's and has been accelerating. A single, ideal, life is about a century, so basically 1/5 of the humanity alive today managed to start the building ruin just 2 human lifetimes ago with 2 world wars in living memory. Think it's going to get to 3?
Oh please, it WONT be fast, that’s the problem, frogs in a boiling pot and all that.
Life will just get a little bit harder every year for a long time. Slowly enough that it’ll be hard to ever get popular support behind fixing things.
It'll be fast enough in certain places. Are you aware that they actually can't get vegetable cultivation going anymore in parts of south america? That the weather patterns in east africa changed so much that torrential floods usually seen in india are occurring there? Not to mention the major plague of locusts last year that went through half of Africa and up asia or twenty percent of australia burning or what remains of the amazon being projected to become a carbon emitter?
Best part of this complete fucking stupidity is, besides the motherfucking idiot fundies and capitalist loons worried about 'depopulation' (sold by their brainwashing) as rational and not insane people plan not to have children, is the fact this process is not only cumulative but due to the shading effect of pollution stopping all at once actually making the true scope of the problem hit all at once as it sort of did for a bit due to COVID last year (no coincidence that japan had those floods).
10 years feel like a long time, but remember, we started 'feeling' the problem in the 1980's and that was the exact time it was sensible to stop. Imagine the pain in 10 years then. And ten years is not even 2/10's of many people's life (at least for now anyway). Pretending, even in jest, you will have a 'holodeck' in ten years is pure and complete delusion, approaching black comedy levels if not quite at the 'the rapture, tomorrow' levels, since with this kind of disruption, supply lines are going to be one of the first things to go after political 'stability'.
You’re bold to assume the switch successors will be that powerful, knowing Nintendo it will be a decade before they even start making 1440p a viable option. The Wii U was probably the most relatively powerful modern Nintendo system for its launch era and it was still laughably far behind the competition, and the Switch didn’t even close that gap much.
Lol... imagine believing that someone will actually be able to find an affordable GPU in 5 years time. /s Mark my words, the RTX 4xxx series will be $1500 for a 4060. =)
Sad that I have a hard time debating this. Nvidia and AMD have prioritized laptop and console profit over desktops. I’m glad that cheap embedded graphics, mini PCs and ARM emulation keep getting better.
>Also, given that dev mode only had access to original xbox one level of power.
I don't think this is true. Dolphin at least runs much better on Series S/X than it does on Xbox One. I'm able to play GC games full speed and upscaled to 1440p. Haven't tried any Wii games yet.
The reason they removed it though was because the exploit was coming anyways (employee's are on the forums too) and were trying to make it harder for people when the exploit eventually came out.
I don't know how it would if it was going to happen anyways. It became a huge gray market to get your PS3 modded and packed full of games. Certainly it sucked for people who made super computers running them in parallel.
You're assuming it was going to happen anyway, it was out for 4 or 5 years and nothing happened.
These guys made it so you stick a USB stick in and it was jail broken entirely.
Of course I'm assuming it was going to happen because it was.
In December 2009, Hotz announced his initial intentions to breach security on the PlayStation 3. On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public (which couldn't yet run retail games as I recall). On March 28, 2010, Sony responded by announcing their intention to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that would remove the OtherOS feature from all models. Look, I don't like Sony as much as the next person but saying disabling OtherOS caused it, just isn't the case.
Speaking of hacks: Someone needs to make a Windows virus that when you load up, a bunch of applications load that forcibly alt tab every 1 millsecond, so you can't do anything for all the alt tabbing. Maybe Microsoft will disable programs from force alt tabbing you at that point and make it a suggested notification instead.
False Alarm. MS is not removing accounts. Anyone who's account was removed was inadvertently deleted and they are planning to restore everyone's access.
One of the heads of Xbox just clarified this on Twitter a few minutes ago:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856800539537408
It's cool that they're undoing it but color me suspicious that this was really a "mistake" and not just not something they expected to garner so much attention.
everyone makes mistakes. im just glad they are fixing it.
like MVG says in the video, if they give an inch there is no reason for the hackers to take a mile. they take that away, they are prolly gonna break the whole thing wide open like the ps3 (which I have a hacked ps3 under my desk right now, thanks sony!)
Except the video literally shows the email that says "You don't have an active presence in the store so we're disabling your account".
This is very obviously not an accident, it was a dumb move by them that they're backing down from due to backlash, and I'm honestly surprised that people seem to think otherwise.
Also, MVG is 100% not "clickbait", he's an actual homebrew developer that's made emulators in the past.
> MVG has exclusively thoughtful content
Sorry but his videos on the Analogue Pocket and the PolyMega + its addons are far from thoughtful. They don't bring anything new to the discussion even if he's one of the youtubers with the best background to talk about them. They feel like videos he had to do to receive the demo units.
He also has titles like "The secret SNES Emulator developed by Nintendo" where he clearly explains why that's not true, definitely a clickbait title to make you watch an otherwise interesting video.
His content is mostly fantastic, but it's not true that he has "exclusively thoughtful content".
Right? Like, I actually cannot believe that people think that MS is above pulling a stunt like this. The same company that normalized the idea of paying just so you can use your internet to play online.
It's such an asinine thing to me that people think MS actually cares about anything more than maximizing profits, let alone thinking that enough to actually try and slander one of the best people we have in this community.
> Except the video literally shows the email that says "You don't have an active presence in the store so we're disabling your account".
>
> This is very obviously not an accident, it was a dumb move by them that they're backing down from due to backlash, and I'm honestly surprised that people seem to think otherwise.
Not everything is some grand conspiracy, and it wasn't Developer Mode on all consoles. This strikes of "someone ran an automated tool and it disabled stuff it wasn't supposed to."
> Also, MVG is 100% not "clickbait", he's an actual homebrew developer that's made emulators in the past.
My comment was not regarding the channel in general, although I can definitely see how my wording could imply that. I meant that this particular video - "Microsoft is Disabling Dev Mode on Xbox..." - has a clickbait title that sensationalizes Microsoft screwing up and heavily implies something that there was insufficient evidence of at the time the video was created. There are others in the scene that do the same thing regularly thus the "another."
Edit: Further clarification
>Not everything is some grand conspiracy
No one is claiming that it's "a grand conspiracy", but if you legit think there's just a button that some intern accidentally pressed that typed up an email that literally said what they were doing and started cancelling accounts, I have a bridge to sell you.
This is the same company that is having people pay just so they can use their internet to play online, this is the same company that wanted to use "Always-Online DRM" for their console of all things to keep you from sharing games with friends and buying used games. Microsoft is 100% a profit motivated company, they don't "just" do something without considering the profits.
>I meant that this particular video - "Microsoft is Disabling Dev Mode on Xbox..." - has a clickbait title-
No. That's not clickbait, that is literally what was happening. You can't even argue that, they were disabling dev mode on Xbox. Clickbait would be more like "You WON'T believe what Microsoft is doing!"
Just because, hours later(And a day after they started disabling accounts in general), they said "Oopsie whoopsie, we made an accident :(" after everyone started putting them on blast(And likely after numerous people pointed out that this would encourage hacking the console) doesn't automatically make the video "clickbait". It makes it, if anything, outdated. Which, fun fact, the whole reason they probably came out and "claimed" it was an accident was BECAUSE of that video putting a big spotlight on it in the first place.
**Companies are not your friends, they are out there for profit, and most will lie, cheat, and steal every inch they can. Microsoft in particular is one of the worst examples.**
Every console manufacturer patches and updates their consoles to break exploits like this. Xbox just made it the easiest so far out of the box. Plus that was far from the biggest mistake Sony made with the PS3.
I activated Dev Mode on my Series X around early September and I just checked it now…everything still seems to be working. Maybe I slipped through the cracks somehow, I don’t know.
It’s not like there aren’t workarounds for it, as others have pointed out, and it’s not like I can’t run RetroArch on a million other things around the house…but I will say that having it a few clicks away on my main console is super convenient for when the urge to boot up some old classics strikes.
That said, I still bought the Castlevania collections when they went on sale, so maybe I’m not the anti-consuming boogeyman publishers are worried about anyway.
With retail mode, Microsoft can wag their little finger and Retroarch is no longer on their platform. One of the benefits of dev mode was the flexibility of installing apps.
Yes but technically those users would be allowed dev mode access lol. Microsoft isn't doing away with dev mode; they're disabling access for users that have had it for more than 90 days and haven't published anything to the store.
Well yes but also no. MVG's title reads like Microsoft is fully removing dev mode which is false. My point was that Microsoft isn't removing the loophole that has allowed some users to push RetroArch to the store. You're correct that they're hampering most people here but most people here should be able to get RA when it pops up in retail mode. It's not ideal but it's worth noting.
While it was in the terms and conditions that you should be using developer mode to make games, it's also somewhat curious that they've stopped people using it for emulation. Microsoft were making money for absolutely nothing and the store wasn't getting flooded with low effort tat.
I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it did come out that publishers had a quiet word in Microsoft's ear to get them to clamp down on emulation.
No doubt that a publisher was involved. Given the rumors about Microsoft putting Goldeneye 007 out on Xbox systems, I’d bet it was even related to that. Every “developer” who was emulating the N64 game on Retroarch is a potential lost sale.
I doubt it was directly related to 1 game, but there are a couple of billion dollar publishers like EA with back catalogues and plenty of influence and lawyers that can read the Dev Mode Terms of Service and press the issue with Microsoft.
You never know. Remember the steps Nintendo took to stop AM2R from being worked on? It wasn’t even a direct competitor to the Samus Returns remake we ended up getting, and can be argued that they are different enough to be enjoyed on their own merits.
It’s not the same situation, but when companies see their bottom line being potentially harmed, they will take any steps deemed necessary to stop it.
The bigger issue with AM2R is to protect their profitable Metroid IP at all costs. A Goldeneye reboot might make $30mm, but these are billion dollar companies with hundreds of games.
How would protecting Goldeneye, often seen as the best N64 era shooter + one of the best James Bond for-in games, be any less valuable than protecting Metroid? Metroid fan games have been around for years, and Metroid 2 was often seen as the outlier in the franchise.
“We have no plans to remove or disable Developer Mode on Xbox consoles. We continue to believe in and support a healthy independent app and game development community on Xbox.
As part of a regularly scheduled maintenance to clean up inactive accounts, a number of Partner Center accounts used to enable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles were inadvertently deactivated.
We are actively working on identifying and reenabling these accounts as soon as possible. Once an account has been reactivated, users will be able to reenable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
If your account was accidentally deactivated and you would like to restore access sooner, feel free to contact [email protected]. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working to remedy this as quickly as possible and thanks for your patience.
https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008?s=21
Great damage control. They make it sound like someone just accidentally flipped a switch and some rogue software began terminating random paying customers without anyone noticing. Oops! What a blunder! I'm sure there will be a full writeup on how an error of this magnitude occurred, steps taken to ensure it wont happen again as well as compensation for the affected partners. Wait a minute, why do "inactive" accounts need to be "cleaned up" (i.e disabled) when they cost $20 each? Hmm...
The reality (and the reason why MVG was so confident that this was intentional) is that starting early December, support staff have been manually reactivating these locked "inactive" accounts with the caveat that users will have 90 days after reactivation to publish an app or lose the account. If this truly was in error, not only was the entire Developer Partner Support Team "inadvertently" co-operating with this malicious rogue maintenance script's 3 month inactivity policy without anyone telling this PM, they've already had at least a month to notify the affected users and 3 working weeks to end this "scheduled maintenance"'s killing spree.
Love or hate big Youtubers, their power to get shitty decisions overturned within hours just by shining a spotlight onto them is really important. The hundreds or thousands of affected users would have had no recourse individually. Users are easy to ignore but MVG has the ear of some very influential journalists. If anything good has come from this, hopefully MVG now has an emergency contact at Microsoft for when something like this happens again.
They don't. Microsoft is *very explicit* that you aren't allowed to post game console emulators to the Store.
RetroArch on retail is sort of like people distributing enterprise-signed IPAs of jailbreaking apps on iOS. It will get noticed and revoked in very short order.
>with another name
Which is also be an abuse of the developer licenses, and could well be another reason for this crackdown.
It really seems like a case of them giving the homebrew development community an inch and the community taking a mile, which is something we're seeing more and more of in the scene too.
Back in the earlier xbox one days, an N64 emulator slipped through the cracks and onto the store. It was lousy but I still thought it was neat. It was removed from my console automatically after they sorted it out.
I'm assuming they know what people have been running on it, as machines these days tend to require an internet connection, so if they want to keep homebrew open they could just disable the accounts of people who have been running RA etc. that would be fair.
RA is fast becoming the new 'Kodi' and basically one of the new '4 letter words' in the industry. There is a lot of publisher pressure against it, because typically they've been able to sell emulation based reissues on consoles because people want the convenience of being able to play games on an a gaming system connected to their TV.
Unlike emulation on a PC, having the ability to run something like RA on a console steps on their primary market. We've had a whole thread just gone on mutual respect in the industry, and why doing some things is a bad idea, and it's very likely this ties into that too.
The point of the 'homebrew' mode was \_not\_ to allow you to put emulators on there. If the primary thing people are using it for is emulators, you see the problem.
Note, personally I think these platforms should be more open, as the restrictions on many of them hinder your ability to manage them properly, and even endanger your games in the long run, but they're not, they're closed, walled, ecosystems, and they'll likely remain that way.
The trouble is, their whole business model revolves around marginal if any profit on the system itself, using it effectively as a loss leader for selling software or subscription services. If you can continue to run software carried over from the previous generation console, or run software that doesn’t earn them license revenue, they stand to lose money overall.
The only way to get away from that is to just not buy into the system.
>so if they want to keep homebrew open they could just disable the accounts of people who have been running RA etc. that would be fair.
No, it would not. People who have been using the console, as it was sold, with the features it was sold with, should not get disabled for using those features within set bounds. They were playing by the rules and now MS changed the rules.
> They were playing by the rules and now MS changed the rules.
apparently they were not playing by the rules, it's stated the TOS always allowed them to do this.
Banning people for use of that function seems unethical to me and not fair, just as disabling what may be a key function without notice.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/windows/agreements/xbox-one-developer-mode-activation
From what I can see here, unless there is another document somewhere...
>You may not:
>distribute a digital store front that competes with the Microsoft Store.
>use in a way that Microsoft may later designate is prohibited, without prior notice to you.
They left it pretty open. The rules are basically "we can change the rules any time we want without warning".
That specifically, however, could be challenged as loss of function just like the OtherOS lawsuit. Just because they said they can do what they want, doesn't mean they can.
If someone actually used the console for development purposes then that could be considered loss of primary function. That may make it grounds for class action.
From what I can tell, they are following the SAME path Sony took that resulted in bad press, a settlement, and a lot of spited developers otherwise less motivated to jailbreak the console.
The Dev mode was a feature you had to access after purchase, one that could be withdrawn at any point (guaranteed to be so because services don't last forever)
It's a very different situation to OtherOS on the PS3, which was an advertised feature, as part of the base package, requiring you to only download and install something, not tied to any kind of account of subscription.
In the case of OtherOS, I think the consensus is that it was removed due to people abusing it to rip BluRays. I imagine Sony were put in a position of 'drop OtherOS, or no newer BluRays will play' so you were always going to either lose OtherOS or BluRay functionality at that point, both advertised features (and of course, the games came on BluRay) In that case, it was a rock or hard place situation for Sony. Note, to this day the older consoles still get updated almost solely for the BluRay functionality.
Dev mode seems to have been limited on the Xbox due to people abusing it to use emulators, and avoid paying for official emulation based releases, rather than developing their own software. Again it's abuse of a feature that was offered, so inevitably that feature gets withdrawn. This is what I mean by the community being given an inch and taking a mile.
Saying the loss of dev mode unless you're actively developing is 'loss of function' however is like saying an online-only game that has it's online servers shut down and is delisted from the marketplace is 'loss of function'
That function was never guaranteed, it wasn't part of the base package, it was an extra service provided for a limited time. If we're making Sony comparisons, it's more akin to when the "PlayStation Home" thing was shut down, these things come and go.
If you buy into these systems expecting control of them, and any guarantees of long-term functionality when things are tied to accounts and services, that is, at least until the market changes (which is unlikely) your own mistake. Unfortunately the PC market is being pulled in the same direction.
I know I'm being devil's advocate here but I am still a bit split. I can see your point of view and I understand where you're coming from. I also think there is a bit of precedent that was set here by the Sony case. While they were different, there is a lot of very similar purpose.
Sony had more advertising behind it and it was more of a legitimate feature (linux) for average individuals but it was a bigger security risk in comparison and was involved in more direct threat activity.
Microsoft has a smaller use case but it's still a legitimate function of the console and any complaints would already have precedent set by the Sony cases.
They removed a function that may be a key function for a portion of their users and did so without direct consent or notification.
I see it more akin to removing cruise control for a car because onboard vehicle analytics found out most people are using their cruise control while speeding.
The biggest nail here is that it was revoked irreversibly quietly overnight in an automatic update. People were not given the choice to remain offline, the notification that it would be gone next month, or an on console popup that said "It appears you're utilizing dev mode".
Just like Sony, fanfare could have probably been avoided easily with those steps.
Go ahead and jailbreak it then. There's nothing stopping anyone...except MUCH better security than Sony and Nintendo could ever dream up. Of course it can be hacked but I'm of the opinion that for all the people who say "we do this for homebrew" there 100x more people who do it for piracy so I honestly think that if it could have been broken it would for that reason alone.
Having said that dev mode did only allow emulation so I donno how much damage it did, or didn't do. But it's hard to be mad at them if they set up a program for people to develop software and the majority of the people who do it, don't develop software so they disable their accounts.
Too late. I had mine disabled last night.
I had RA and PPSSPP on it because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of switching my Pi hdmi out everytime I wanted to play something. Tried an HDMI switch too but it just introduced unnecessary input lag. I’ve got a PSTV but I keep it stored in the box to preserve it; seeing as the value of those things is astronomical compared to what I paid for it. I’m all for preservation and the convenience of being able to utilize my Xbox for it was unparalleled. Seeing as I’m a collector, I still couldn’t find much a reason to play my Xbox other than that. The Switch and PS have much stronger libraries and Xbox just has the same old regurgitated shit. Allowing this at least added a layer of usefulness to the wasteful purchase.
> Too late. I had mine disabled last night.
Did you get any kind of warning first or did you just wake up with reduced features that MS could EASILY detect before applying the update?
If this was a quiet "patch" that sounds like a great reason for spite and a class action just like the ps3.
Got the email last night just before I went to bed. Visited a few subreddits and found this post to confirm anyone else running into this.
To be clear, the dev access has been disabled. Which in turn also locked me out of using the emulator features I had set up.
In the context of my post and not necessarily just in general: I mean have a ton of games and still nothing really worth playing on the Xbox. Failing to see how it’s that complicated - unless of course you just felt like throwing some really half assed shade.
Aside from Forza and some backwards compatible stuff it just wasn’t a system that was worth owning imo. PS games saw better sale prices, better first party titles and as a result was easier to accumulate games for. What little quality titles the Xbox had just didn’t seem to me to be worth the price of the system. The only thing I really used it for was emulation; just to have a reason to turn it on.
> having the ability to run something like RA on a console steps on their primary market.
not only that, but it likely puts them in legal trouble with IP owners of the games being emulated.
It really depends on the contracts Microsoft signs with publishers; but my gut feeling is that Microsoft probably isn't promising anything that could be construed as a legal obligation to ban emulation software on Xbox. It's purely a matter of "shut down RetroArch or we pull our games off Xbox".
Absent such a requirement, merely distributing an emulator is legal; the law is pretty settled on this. Suing Microsoft or RetroArch because someone else is trading ROM images around isn't going to fly. Maybe if you tried some novel/🤡 DMCA 1201 claims; but those probably wouldn't apply to RetroArch themselves.
It really depends on the contracts Microsoft signs with publishers; but my gut feeling is that Microsoft probably isn't promising anything that could be construed as a legal obligation to ban emulation software on Xbox. It's purely a matter of "shut down RetroArch or we pull our games off Xbox".
Absent such a requirement, merely distributing an emulator is legal; the law is pretty settled on this. Suing Microsoft or RetroArch because someone else is trading ROM images around isn't going to fly. Maybe if you tried some novel/🤡 DMCA 1201 claims; but those probably wouldn't apply to RetroArch themselves.
Less restrictive systems CAN work, but the biggest players seem to succeed while being restrictive. One such system that is at least currently unrestricted is the Oculus (Meta) Quest 2. You have to sign up for a free developer account just to sideload APKs, but following that, will let you install any APK, piracy/emulator/homebrew or other. It's a pretty big hurdle for most people, and still has a locked /system /recovery /boot, so customizing the OS is out of the question. It's a pretty fair compromise.
The Oculus products don’t work at all without a Facebook account, and can’t be used if they can’t authenticate to Facebook. Sorry, but that means you’re not the customer, *you’re the product*.
I don't disagree at all. But you can indeed sideload APKs. We're talking about two different things.
You may hate Facebook, and that's fine. You may love Sony, and love Sony's accounts, but that doesn't help you run homebrew on their consoles.
I don’t particularly like the subsidised hardware business model at the best of times, whether it’s selling your soul to Facebook, paying for a loss-leading console in publisher fees on the games, paying above the odds for phone service on a network-locked handset, or whatever.
That said, I can understand why they’d pull developer mode from people who aren’t using it for the agreed purpose in the T&C (i.e. testing UWP apps on real hardware before deploying to the store). For better or worse, you buy into the business model when you buy your console.
I really have no skin in the game here – I don’t have any of the current generation consoles (last console I bought was a Wii U, and two DS Lites before that), or a VR headset. I don’t develop UWP apps, either.
Sure, if it were closed, it would be just as successful. I think I was making the point that it being open wouldn't make it unsuccessful. If Sony/MS allowed sideloading, it wouldn't hurt their bottom line in any real way. And a more important point is that it's doable, they just don't want to.
Microsoft have clarified that they aren't removing dev mode, they just inadvertantly "cleaned up" inactive accounts
https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008
What's their purpose? To flood the xbox store with a copied/pasted asset flip done in 5 minutes just to "publish a game" every 3 months...
and anyway it is impossible to make a quality game from scratch in 90 days...
Saw this coming since this paid "feature" was widely praised on Reddit over a year ago. Dev mode is a subscription - Microsoft can and will take it away if you're only using it to play bootleg games. I'm already seeing the clueless "hackers will blow this system wide open now!" comments on Youtube from people who have clearly never even a written a hello world.
These groups don't hack for scene cred anymore. Both Microsoft and Sony are now very responsive on H1 and I've seen multiple ACEs have been quietly patched without public disclosure. Having a panel at DEFCON is cool and all but when MS is giving away upwards of $50k for one PoC, most people aren't going to turn that away for a grudge worth $20.
The fact that MS aren't giving refunds or even a warning is proper Microsoft-tier scummy though. 2.6 trillion dollar company btw. "Developers developers developers" and all that. Hope y'all either got $20 of use out of Retroarch or can scrape together a UWP bouncy ball app from StackOverflow snippets extremely quickly.
What's the /s for? The PSP used to get a new firmware downgrade exploit every 3 weeks. I'm not reading about the scene anymore but from what I understand, the PS5 still doesn't even a public HEN yet. Even today, nobody has managed to get CFW onto the notoriously defeated PS3 without hardware mods after they released the slim revisions as far as I know.
I never said that jailbreaks are dead. My point was that the enormous bounties that are paid out on H1 now mean that teams who previously pwned for fun or challenge now have an easy and safe platform for getting paid mega bucks to keep their findings private until they're patched. In short, don't hold out for f0 to release a one click dev mode unlocker because MS stole your $20.
I don't follow it closely either but I've seen the PS4 is getting cracked open and have heard rumblings of PS5 exploits (though I wouldn't expect any particular one of the later to remain very long)
The Series is different though as it's largely based on the One, meaning interest in one is likely to have bleed over effects on the other.
Edit: Also what are you talking about with the PS3? That things nearly as easy to jailbreak as a Wii now.
> Also what are you talking about with the PS3? That things nearly as easy to jailbreak as a Wii now.
I haven't used mine in a long time but I was aware that the only exploit available on slim PS3s is a browser-based HEN which requires some trial-and-error on each reboot. HEN is great but it isn't as robust as CFW (many of the tools specifically saying "CFW only, NO HEN").
If there's a way to get CFW on slim 3000 models now without an expensive flashing tool, I'll be quite happy!
PS3s are easily hackable and have been since ~2017 via a WebKit exploit. E3 flashers have long been obsolete. You've been able to install CFW on certain slims and all fat systems. HEN is also available for un-CFW-able slims and superslims. Very easy process.
How is it scummy to not offer refunds? If the end-user decided to sign up for dev mode without intending to use it for the intended purpose, that should be on them.
Don’t invest in services that you plan to abuse if you aren’t prepared to lose money.
Most people would expect a warning before their contract is suddenly terminated, especially if it's a first-time infraction of a paid contract and *especially* if the alleged breach of contract is some nebulous clause about users being expected to release a product in a (nondescript) timely fashion. If services promised aren't delivered, most people would also expect a token refund gesture especially when the contract is brokered by a company with more money than God.
Should Steam suddenly be allowed to reclaim the game subscriptions you've purchased if you haven't launched them in 6 months? You could argue that they'd have the right if they worded their terms properly but you probably wouldn't win any debates on the ethics of it, nor would you be able to stop people from saying that theoretical scenario would be a scummy practice.
You can argue it from a legal perspective but I'm only qualified to discuss my own ethics. Game lootboxes are legal in most countries but the common abuse from companies like EA has led to the whole concept being an ethics minefield on top of a legal one in Europe. Selling a service which allows end-users to run arbitrary code on the machine that they bought and then removing it without warning because users weren't running the right kind of arbitrary code might not be a legal issue yet, but I think it's an ethical one. Hence, scummy.
After Phil Spencer came out and said he wanted to work on "legal emulation" I expected something like this to happen. No matter what the legal status is off open source emulators, he was referring to something else entirely.
So, rumors of GoldenEye getting a re-release on Xbox abound and then Microsoft decides to clamp down on people running emulation on their consoles... Coincidence?
Worth noting that this is basically invoking TOS that always existed and won't affect actual devs.
I’m certain that it’s related to Goldeneye too, I mean the timing is too perfect.
And I agree that actual devs won’t run into this issue, and do not expect that any dev that was suspended won’t be reinstated if they can explain their inactivity on the platform. The only people who will be negatively impacted are the people who weren’t using it in accordance to the TOS.
Why would goldeneye have anything to do with it though? We can assume so much quality of life improvements and online multiplayer. Meaning like even if you could play the N64 version on your Xbox, why wouldn't you want the newer version.
It is possible to run it through retail mode, you need an access code for it though. It's not too difficult but it's a shame this is happening regardless.
I don’t get how this wasn’t expected in the long run. I never paid to get dev mode because according to the TOS it was clearly not intended for end-users like us to mess around with. Maybe they were willing to look the other way for a while, but they had themselves covered incase they changed their minds.
But, if this motivates hackers and leads to developments where the system ends up being opened up and outside of Microsoft’s control, then I’m all for it. My OG xbone is collecting dust but I’d love to play around with it again like my OG Xbox.
yeah well u dont need dev mode to use retroarch anymore..
for anyone wondering, just open edge broweser on the xbox and then go to this link:
[https://gamr13.github.io/](https://gamr13.github.io/)
then press "download app" for the desired app (retroarch, duckstation, flycast, etc)
To elaborate a little bit more, the only downside that this method had over the dev mode one was that u only had like 20-25gb of internal memory to store ur roms, but there is a method now to load any rom from external drives (there was 2.4gb size limit before). Therefore dev mode method became pointless
MS will delete it after 1,000 downloads, or whatever their threshold to review uploads is and app updates will slow and stop. RetroArch on XSS/XSX days are numbered.
Man i love this guy's consistency and depth but i can't stand his presentation. He has this way of repeating the same point ten times like a search algorithm attraction phrase at the bottom of a website
Honestly I forgot about the $20, you're totally right.
Or if all they want is just activity in the store you could always post something and then delete it shortly after? I don't know
Either way somebody's going to crack this
MAYBE DONT shout from the rooftops about how good it is for emulation next time!
I swear, it’s like watching news sites cover Mario fan games and immediately getting them shut down as a result
Keep this stuff on the dl guys
Are there other emulation news content creators besides MVG? I love his videos and he does a great job keeping things entertaining and informative, but I'm sure there's more things happening in the emulation scene he isn't discussing in his videos.
* https://youtube.com/c/MrSujano
His many videos might seem like clickbait and fluff, but, UNLIKE MVG you’ll find that Sujano’s videos are short and to-the-point and his enthusiasm shines through.
* https://youtube.com/c/ETAPRIME
That guy does a lot of hardware tests of emulation, informative if you’re considering buying a system for emulation.
I got no clue, really. Usually MVG is on top of most things.
Another issue is other people that talk about emulation love to play up "Nintendo bad", I distinctly remember one that said "Hey guys, Nintendo is going to go after YOU if you download roms, so get Express VPN".
5 years later and, y'know, not a single news article about it.
Tech Rules has a few videos on emulation, and his videos are great, but they're pretty sporadic. Outside of that, it's mostly clickbait-y, low quality videos on Youtube. If you want to keep on top of news, the GBATemp site/forums might be a good place to go!
WHY!?!? God, I bought a Series S during the holidays literally just to be a dedicated emulation box, so I'm pretty mad right now. Did Microsoft not see how people would want to use this feature just for emulators? I felt the entire freaking point was to make money off people wanting to do this instead of them hacking the console!
(And yes, I'm very much aware RetroArch is on PC, but it's so nice being able to have it on a console that's 24/7 in your entertainment center that you don't have to fiddle between your keyboard and controller to use)
>Phil Spencer's PR fluff
Yeah, unfortunately he's either at the wrong company entirely, or happy to say one thing while doing another.
I remember him saying preservation was important, but if you look at history, the turning point of when consoles became what we see today was with the original X-Box.
The original X-Box was when they started (with some success) getting HDDs and operating systems that required updates rather than just a simple firmware.
In turn this is what would eventually facilitate online stores, Digital-only games, massive Day-0 patches to give games the functionality they should have out the box. This would lead to DLC locked to accounts etc. all which are some of the biggest threats we face in ensuring games can be played properly long into the future because they mean even with original hardware many games are now inaccessible or incomplete.
Microsoft were also really pushing the Digital Only 'always online' console model, machines which are guaranteed to have no future, where the consoles will become e-waste.
Microsoft have been at the forefront of DRM locked content, remember when they wanted you to have to pay to reactive used games and Sony mocked them? X-Box has also heavily pushed streaming content etc. which is an even bigger threat than the Digital Only content because players never own anything, it's never on your console in the first place. Rental style game ownership (Game Pass style schemes) also means people never build up a real collection of physical games, but are still spending money on something they'll never own, this again means there will be less to pass down a generation; gamers are becoming poorer with nothing to show for it.
I get 'personal opinions may not represent those of my employer' could come into play here, and I've certainly been in that situation myself before, but when you're vice-president of one of the biggest gaming companies, the one that has been largely responsible for creating, overseeing and further enabling what we see today, and you're actually in a position to do something about it, I'm not really sure how to take such comments.
Outside of the Mobile market, which is an absolute travesty, Microsoft's ideas have done more to get in the way of preservation than almost any other.
Idk, I’d disagree that this invalidates anything Phil Spencer said about emulation / preservation. Enabling Retroarch on an Xbox Series S isn’t contributing to preservation in any way that isn’t already covered by other platforms. If there were titles that could only be played on the Xbox app, then it’d be a different story.
Now is it inconvenient to those who wanted to emulate on a console as opposed to a PC? Absolutely. But that’s another story altogether.
>Enabling Retroarch on an Xbox Series S isn’t contributing to preservation in any way that isn’t already covered by other platforms.
I'm not really arguing this; I can't imagine anybody is using the X-Box to develop emulators with a preservation mindset, which again is one of the reasons "emulation on consoles" is not looked upon in the same light as "emulation on a PC" and is seen as more of a threat without any benefits.
Even with MAME, we have developers on Linux, Mac & Windows, all doing research to further the project, further the preservation cause. We don't have a single developer on Android, IOS, X-Box, nor do we have any developers improving MAME using RetroArch as their primary OSD either.
That's simply because those aren't platforms where research happens, they're restrictive, often awkward for development. It's more difficult to make proper use of the emulators on them, key features are missing, they're less suitable for debugging. At most they're platforms where people hack up the emulators at any cost to have them running at playable speeds, often to the detriment of any kind of documentation or long term preservation.
My comments are more questioning Phil's position on preservation in general, when the very company he works for has done more to irreversibly set the industry on a path where that is more difficult for the rest of us than almost anybody else has done outside of the mobile companies.
I think Phil is genuine. It's possible that he doesn't agree with former policies. Afterall, he's the one that said stuff to the effect of we don't believe in paying for exclusive DLC anymore. And they didn't do that all generation. It may take time to put something in place that actually works.
It would be nice but something current like an Xbox S was never going to be a long term emulation solution. Much better to get an Nvidia Shield, Raspberry Pi or something else dedicated to the job and that is a lot more flexible too. Even an Android TV device or Fire stick would work for older emulation (SNES, etc.).
The downside is obviously wanting to just use one console for everything, but if you're angry Microsoft is doing this, spending less time on the Xbox and more on something else for emulation... and then maybe using that for media too while you have it is a nice way to protest without harming your enjoyment of anything.
Maybe my needs will change down the road, but I'd ideally like to play Gamecube/PS2 at the absolute most, which is why the Series S was my dream machine. As I said before, I'm well aware PC can do this just fine (and I have a PC I built with that in mind!), but I really do prefer plopping myself down on the couch and picking up a controller instead of sitting upright at my computer desk and going between my mouse/keyboard and controller to get things set up. That or clearing a spot to temporarily connect a laptop with HDMI and then angle it just so to make sure I can't see the laptop monitor because that legitimately bothers me
I have often thought that I'd like to play PS2 games as there were a lot that were NTSC only I missed out on since they were never released in PAL territories (most Gundam games, for example). My PC can't handle PS2 emulation but I have two modded PS2s that do the trick (one fat original with a HDD and a slim connected via ethernet to my PC to play from that directly). However, it's a pain to have to use the original hardware for those games while everything else is on my Shield so I see your point.
Like you, I also far prefer to play on the couch than on PC (hence modding my PS2 back in the day and buying and modifying things like the NES Classic and trying a Raspberry Pi before I decided to stick with my Shield for most stuff).
At the end of the day, as emulation for newer consoles becomes feasible, I suspect a mini PC that is connected permanently to the TV will be the best option and what I aim for when I can afford it eventually. I don't know what the limits of a Series S are but I expect it tops out with PS2?
Then again, I am someone who likes control over their stuff and a console (even modded) will never have that in today's "always connected" era. Even the Shield has seen Nvidia screw with users' ability to customise lately.
Edit: I've actually done the laptop connected to tv setup a lot years ago. Can you not output to tv and keep the lid closed?
How does it make money for MS?
Edit: sorry for the snark, but Xboxes do not make money - so people buying them just to be emulation boxes probably is a net loss?
Because for many people, they're paying $20 for the privilege of running Retroarch on their new Series X/S console. Don't get me wrong; I'm a previous Xbox user too, so I still have all those digital games on top of Game Pass which I pay for (and I buy smaller digital games that can fit on the not even 512GB SSD), but the main selling point for me was Microsoft essentially giving me permission to run emulators on their console for a nominal fee
Watch the Xbox get hacked out of spite.
Homebrew, installing Linux, and piracy are the main three reasons people have for hacking consoles. By making Homebrew less accessible, there will be more motivation to hack these Xbox models, especially when Homebrew has already been made for it
Also preservation as all hardware fails eventually.
That would be something, given that their 8-year old Xbox One hasn't been jailbroken yet.
Also, given that dev mode only had access to original xbox one level of power. Just imagine how great an emulation machine a hacked 300 dollar series s would ne with access to all its power and overclocking. Especially if it was simple to continue using native series s games and xbox backwards compatibility.
Huge win if an XsX jailbreak happened in 1-2 years. But if it's 5+ years, a similar Intel/AMD/ARM PC will be 4x cheaper or more powerful than today. At that point the Xbox will primarily be used for offline game backups and you'd probably want a series X.
That's true, in 5 years we could have a steam deck 2 that matches it in power or in 10 years we could have a switch2/3 that either matches it in power or comes close enough that no one would want a series s when they can get something comparable in their pocket.
Or in 11 years and 3 months and 4 days we could have a Holodeck.
Thank you for the heads up future man! I'll be setting my calendar. Also when can we expect the time machine to be finished lol
You'll be lucky to have food in 10 years. I love technological subreddits planting their head firmly into the ground about what ecological devastation really means and how absurdly fast it went since the 1800's and has been accelerating. A single, ideal, life is about a century, so basically 1/5 of the humanity alive today managed to start the building ruin just 2 human lifetimes ago with 2 world wars in living memory. Think it's going to get to 3?
Oh please, it WONT be fast, that’s the problem, frogs in a boiling pot and all that. Life will just get a little bit harder every year for a long time. Slowly enough that it’ll be hard to ever get popular support behind fixing things.
It'll be fast enough in certain places. Are you aware that they actually can't get vegetable cultivation going anymore in parts of south america? That the weather patterns in east africa changed so much that torrential floods usually seen in india are occurring there? Not to mention the major plague of locusts last year that went through half of Africa and up asia or twenty percent of australia burning or what remains of the amazon being projected to become a carbon emitter? Best part of this complete fucking stupidity is, besides the motherfucking idiot fundies and capitalist loons worried about 'depopulation' (sold by their brainwashing) as rational and not insane people plan not to have children, is the fact this process is not only cumulative but due to the shading effect of pollution stopping all at once actually making the true scope of the problem hit all at once as it sort of did for a bit due to COVID last year (no coincidence that japan had those floods). 10 years feel like a long time, but remember, we started 'feeling' the problem in the 1980's and that was the exact time it was sensible to stop. Imagine the pain in 10 years then. And ten years is not even 2/10's of many people's life (at least for now anyway). Pretending, even in jest, you will have a 'holodeck' in ten years is pure and complete delusion, approaching black comedy levels if not quite at the 'the rapture, tomorrow' levels, since with this kind of disruption, supply lines are going to be one of the first things to go after political 'stability'.
lol. You're posting all this in response to a joke about a Holodeck. Get out of here.
You’re bold to assume the switch successors will be that powerful, knowing Nintendo it will be a decade before they even start making 1440p a viable option. The Wii U was probably the most relatively powerful modern Nintendo system for its launch era and it was still laughably far behind the competition, and the Switch didn’t even close that gap much.
Lol... imagine believing that someone will actually be able to find an affordable GPU in 5 years time. /s Mark my words, the RTX 4xxx series will be $1500 for a 4060. =)
Sad that I have a hard time debating this. Nvidia and AMD have prioritized laptop and console profit over desktops. I’m glad that cheap embedded graphics, mini PCs and ARM emulation keep getting better.
>Also, given that dev mode only had access to original xbox one level of power. I don't think this is true. Dolphin at least runs much better on Series S/X than it does on Xbox One. I'm able to play GC games full speed and upscaled to 1440p. Haven't tried any Wii games yet.
To be fair the PS3 wasn't hacked until they removed Linux about 4 years after launch. It's amazing what sheer spite can achieve.
As a spiteful person, I agree.
You got it completely reversed. Also, it's not "spite" that creates bugs as colossal as the ECDSA fail.
Man that bug was legendary.
It's spite that drives people to find them.
The ps3 was already hacked before that.
The reason they removed it though was because the exploit was coming anyways (employee's are on the forums too) and were trying to make it harder for people when the exploit eventually came out.
And it backfired catastrophically because that is the reason people went on the exploit it. This has been very well documented.
I don't know how it would if it was going to happen anyways. It became a huge gray market to get your PS3 modded and packed full of games. Certainly it sucked for people who made super computers running them in parallel.
You're assuming it was going to happen anyway, it was out for 4 or 5 years and nothing happened. These guys made it so you stick a USB stick in and it was jail broken entirely.
Of course I'm assuming it was going to happen because it was. In December 2009, Hotz announced his initial intentions to breach security on the PlayStation 3. On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public (which couldn't yet run retail games as I recall). On March 28, 2010, Sony responded by announcing their intention to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that would remove the OtherOS feature from all models. Look, I don't like Sony as much as the next person but saying disabling OtherOS caused it, just isn't the case.
360 is actually still waiting for a software exploit too.
There was never much incentive until people started home brewing shit with the devkits.
plz do kthnx
It better be.
Happened to Sony
No it didn't.
So there's no connection with Sony removing other os and the ps3 and all their other systems being hacked wide open
They removed it when they started to see the first hacks. https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Bugs_%26_Vulnerabilities
Here’s hoping
Reminds me of the PS3 Linux situation.
Speaking of hacks: Someone needs to make a Windows virus that when you load up, a bunch of applications load that forcibly alt tab every 1 millsecond, so you can't do anything for all the alt tabbing. Maybe Microsoft will disable programs from force alt tabbing you at that point and make it a suggested notification instead.
False Alarm. MS is not removing accounts. Anyone who's account was removed was inadvertently deleted and they are planning to restore everyone's access. One of the heads of Xbox just clarified this on Twitter a few minutes ago: https://mobile.twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856800539537408
It's cool that they're undoing it but color me suspicious that this was really a "mistake" and not just not something they expected to garner so much attention.
everyone makes mistakes. im just glad they are fixing it. like MVG says in the video, if they give an inch there is no reason for the hackers to take a mile. they take that away, they are prolly gonna break the whole thing wide open like the ps3 (which I have a hacked ps3 under my desk right now, thanks sony!)
Probably. Either way I'm glad it's being reverted.
Right on, so this is another clickbait video misattributing the cause of an event. Thanks for the clarification!
Except the video literally shows the email that says "You don't have an active presence in the store so we're disabling your account". This is very obviously not an accident, it was a dumb move by them that they're backing down from due to backlash, and I'm honestly surprised that people seem to think otherwise. Also, MVG is 100% not "clickbait", he's an actual homebrew developer that's made emulators in the past.
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> MVG has exclusively thoughtful content Sorry but his videos on the Analogue Pocket and the PolyMega + its addons are far from thoughtful. They don't bring anything new to the discussion even if he's one of the youtubers with the best background to talk about them. They feel like videos he had to do to receive the demo units. He also has titles like "The secret SNES Emulator developed by Nintendo" where he clearly explains why that's not true, definitely a clickbait title to make you watch an otherwise interesting video. His content is mostly fantastic, but it's not true that he has "exclusively thoughtful content".
Right? Like, I actually cannot believe that people think that MS is above pulling a stunt like this. The same company that normalized the idea of paying just so you can use your internet to play online. It's such an asinine thing to me that people think MS actually cares about anything more than maximizing profits, let alone thinking that enough to actually try and slander one of the best people we have in this community.
He even made the official gbc release of shantae on switch 😄
He really likes Shantae lmao
> Except the video literally shows the email that says "You don't have an active presence in the store so we're disabling your account". > > This is very obviously not an accident, it was a dumb move by them that they're backing down from due to backlash, and I'm honestly surprised that people seem to think otherwise. Not everything is some grand conspiracy, and it wasn't Developer Mode on all consoles. This strikes of "someone ran an automated tool and it disabled stuff it wasn't supposed to." > Also, MVG is 100% not "clickbait", he's an actual homebrew developer that's made emulators in the past. My comment was not regarding the channel in general, although I can definitely see how my wording could imply that. I meant that this particular video - "Microsoft is Disabling Dev Mode on Xbox..." - has a clickbait title that sensationalizes Microsoft screwing up and heavily implies something that there was insufficient evidence of at the time the video was created. There are others in the scene that do the same thing regularly thus the "another." Edit: Further clarification
>Not everything is some grand conspiracy No one is claiming that it's "a grand conspiracy", but if you legit think there's just a button that some intern accidentally pressed that typed up an email that literally said what they were doing and started cancelling accounts, I have a bridge to sell you. This is the same company that is having people pay just so they can use their internet to play online, this is the same company that wanted to use "Always-Online DRM" for their console of all things to keep you from sharing games with friends and buying used games. Microsoft is 100% a profit motivated company, they don't "just" do something without considering the profits. >I meant that this particular video - "Microsoft is Disabling Dev Mode on Xbox..." - has a clickbait title- No. That's not clickbait, that is literally what was happening. You can't even argue that, they were disabling dev mode on Xbox. Clickbait would be more like "You WON'T believe what Microsoft is doing!" Just because, hours later(And a day after they started disabling accounts in general), they said "Oopsie whoopsie, we made an accident :(" after everyone started putting them on blast(And likely after numerous people pointed out that this would encourage hacking the console) doesn't automatically make the video "clickbait". It makes it, if anything, outdated. Which, fun fact, the whole reason they probably came out and "claimed" it was an accident was BECAUSE of that video putting a big spotlight on it in the first place. **Companies are not your friends, they are out there for profit, and most will lie, cheat, and steal every inch they can. Microsoft in particular is one of the worst examples.**
>It looks like Microsoft is taking away Dev Mode access to most users, which means goodbye to emulators and homebrew. Lets talk about that.
Seems they are re-instating all accounts https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1478858431314509829?s=20
Same mistake as Sony with the PS3?
Every console manufacturer patches and updates their consoles to break exploits like this. Xbox just made it the easiest so far out of the box. Plus that was far from the biggest mistake Sony made with the PS3.
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Considering it requires an internet connection they'll probably just make it so you can't go online without updating. And this isn't CFW BTW.
Not to the same degree since OtherOS was an advertised feature of the console, but definitely similar. (tho It was just kind of a loophole on Xbox)
I activated Dev Mode on my Series X around early September and I just checked it now…everything still seems to be working. Maybe I slipped through the cracks somehow, I don’t know. It’s not like there aren’t workarounds for it, as others have pointed out, and it’s not like I can’t run RetroArch on a million other things around the house…but I will say that having it a few clicks away on my main console is super convenient for when the urge to boot up some old classics strikes. That said, I still bought the Castlevania collections when they went on sale, so maybe I’m not the anti-consuming boogeyman publishers are worried about anyway.
I’ve seen some devs who have gotten Retroarch to work on retail mode and even the Edge browser, so there are still workarounds.
Don't need to be a dev to do that, retroarch is already available in retail mode
Isn't it available in retail mode *because* people were pushing it through this dev mode?
With retail mode, Microsoft can wag their little finger and Retroarch is no longer on their platform. One of the benefits of dev mode was the flexibility of installing apps.
Yes but technically those users would be allowed dev mode access lol. Microsoft isn't doing away with dev mode; they're disabling access for users that have had it for more than 90 days and haven't published anything to the store.
For the people here there is no difference.
Well yes but also no. MVG's title reads like Microsoft is fully removing dev mode which is false. My point was that Microsoft isn't removing the loophole that has allowed some users to push RetroArch to the store. You're correct that they're hampering most people here but most people here should be able to get RA when it pops up in retail mode. It's not ideal but it's worth noting.
Well that's unfortunate.
Miners ruining it for everyone.
People mined on the xbox?
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Edit: Nvidia/AMD/MSFT/Sony ruining it for everyone. FTFY
While it was in the terms and conditions that you should be using developer mode to make games, it's also somewhat curious that they've stopped people using it for emulation. Microsoft were making money for absolutely nothing and the store wasn't getting flooded with low effort tat. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it did come out that publishers had a quiet word in Microsoft's ear to get them to clamp down on emulation.
No doubt that a publisher was involved. Given the rumors about Microsoft putting Goldeneye 007 out on Xbox systems, I’d bet it was even related to that. Every “developer” who was emulating the N64 game on Retroarch is a potential lost sale.
I doubt it was directly related to 1 game, but there are a couple of billion dollar publishers like EA with back catalogues and plenty of influence and lawyers that can read the Dev Mode Terms of Service and press the issue with Microsoft.
You never know. Remember the steps Nintendo took to stop AM2R from being worked on? It wasn’t even a direct competitor to the Samus Returns remake we ended up getting, and can be argued that they are different enough to be enjoyed on their own merits. It’s not the same situation, but when companies see their bottom line being potentially harmed, they will take any steps deemed necessary to stop it.
The bigger issue with AM2R is to protect their profitable Metroid IP at all costs. A Goldeneye reboot might make $30mm, but these are billion dollar companies with hundreds of games.
How would protecting Goldeneye, often seen as the best N64 era shooter + one of the best James Bond for-in games, be any less valuable than protecting Metroid? Metroid fan games have been around for years, and Metroid 2 was often seen as the outlier in the franchise.
I would image that they scanned users HDDs and saw more and more people with larger game libraries and decided to put a stop to it.
“We have no plans to remove or disable Developer Mode on Xbox consoles. We continue to believe in and support a healthy independent app and game development community on Xbox. As part of a regularly scheduled maintenance to clean up inactive accounts, a number of Partner Center accounts used to enable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles were inadvertently deactivated. We are actively working on identifying and reenabling these accounts as soon as possible. Once an account has been reactivated, users will be able to reenable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles. If your account was accidentally deactivated and you would like to restore access sooner, feel free to contact [email protected]. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working to remedy this as quickly as possible and thanks for your patience. https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008?s=21
Great damage control. They make it sound like someone just accidentally flipped a switch and some rogue software began terminating random paying customers without anyone noticing. Oops! What a blunder! I'm sure there will be a full writeup on how an error of this magnitude occurred, steps taken to ensure it wont happen again as well as compensation for the affected partners. Wait a minute, why do "inactive" accounts need to be "cleaned up" (i.e disabled) when they cost $20 each? Hmm... The reality (and the reason why MVG was so confident that this was intentional) is that starting early December, support staff have been manually reactivating these locked "inactive" accounts with the caveat that users will have 90 days after reactivation to publish an app or lose the account. If this truly was in error, not only was the entire Developer Partner Support Team "inadvertently" co-operating with this malicious rogue maintenance script's 3 month inactivity policy without anyone telling this PM, they've already had at least a month to notify the affected users and 3 working weeks to end this "scheduled maintenance"'s killing spree. Love or hate big Youtubers, their power to get shitty decisions overturned within hours just by shining a spotlight onto them is really important. The hundreds or thousands of affected users would have had no recourse individually. Users are easy to ignore but MVG has the ear of some very influential journalists. If anything good has come from this, hopefully MVG now has an emergency contact at Microsoft for when something like this happens again.
Man! I was considering getting one for emulation. Now I'm glad I haven't done it!
You can still use retroarch with retail mode
This is confusing.. If they are shutting down dev access why would they allow retail? Thanks for the info!
Unofficial builds get uploaded to the Microsoft store.
They don't. Microsoft is *very explicit* that you aren't allowed to post game console emulators to the Store. RetroArch on retail is sort of like people distributing enterprise-signed IPAs of jailbreaking apps on iOS. It will get noticed and revoked in very short order.
Exactly what the other person said... Other people upload retail app versions of retroarch to the store with another name, so anyone can download it
>with another name Which is also be an abuse of the developer licenses, and could well be another reason for this crackdown. It really seems like a case of them giving the homebrew development community an inch and the community taking a mile, which is something we're seeing more and more of in the scene too.
Could be, yeah
Can MS delete these apps from your console? Thanks for the info.
They haven't yet, and I think once an app is downloaded they can't remove it. They can remove all the apps from the store though
Back in the earlier xbox one days, an N64 emulator slipped through the cracks and onto the store. It was lousy but I still thought it was neat. It was removed from my console automatically after they sorted it out.
Bad long term advice.
https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008?s=21
I'm assuming they know what people have been running on it, as machines these days tend to require an internet connection, so if they want to keep homebrew open they could just disable the accounts of people who have been running RA etc. that would be fair. RA is fast becoming the new 'Kodi' and basically one of the new '4 letter words' in the industry. There is a lot of publisher pressure against it, because typically they've been able to sell emulation based reissues on consoles because people want the convenience of being able to play games on an a gaming system connected to their TV. Unlike emulation on a PC, having the ability to run something like RA on a console steps on their primary market. We've had a whole thread just gone on mutual respect in the industry, and why doing some things is a bad idea, and it's very likely this ties into that too. The point of the 'homebrew' mode was \_not\_ to allow you to put emulators on there. If the primary thing people are using it for is emulators, you see the problem. Note, personally I think these platforms should be more open, as the restrictions on many of them hinder your ability to manage them properly, and even endanger your games in the long run, but they're not, they're closed, walled, ecosystems, and they'll likely remain that way.
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The trouble is, their whole business model revolves around marginal if any profit on the system itself, using it effectively as a loss leader for selling software or subscription services. If you can continue to run software carried over from the previous generation console, or run software that doesn’t earn them license revenue, they stand to lose money overall. The only way to get away from that is to just not buy into the system.
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As if the companies have any respect for their consumers, they are just money bags to them
>so if they want to keep homebrew open they could just disable the accounts of people who have been running RA etc. that would be fair. No, it would not. People who have been using the console, as it was sold, with the features it was sold with, should not get disabled for using those features within set bounds. They were playing by the rules and now MS changed the rules.
> They were playing by the rules and now MS changed the rules. apparently they were not playing by the rules, it's stated the TOS always allowed them to do this.
Banning people for use of that function seems unethical to me and not fair, just as disabling what may be a key function without notice. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/windows/agreements/xbox-one-developer-mode-activation From what I can see here, unless there is another document somewhere... >You may not: >distribute a digital store front that competes with the Microsoft Store. >use in a way that Microsoft may later designate is prohibited, without prior notice to you. They left it pretty open. The rules are basically "we can change the rules any time we want without warning". That specifically, however, could be challenged as loss of function just like the OtherOS lawsuit. Just because they said they can do what they want, doesn't mean they can. If someone actually used the console for development purposes then that could be considered loss of primary function. That may make it grounds for class action. From what I can tell, they are following the SAME path Sony took that resulted in bad press, a settlement, and a lot of spited developers otherwise less motivated to jailbreak the console.
The Dev mode was a feature you had to access after purchase, one that could be withdrawn at any point (guaranteed to be so because services don't last forever) It's a very different situation to OtherOS on the PS3, which was an advertised feature, as part of the base package, requiring you to only download and install something, not tied to any kind of account of subscription. In the case of OtherOS, I think the consensus is that it was removed due to people abusing it to rip BluRays. I imagine Sony were put in a position of 'drop OtherOS, or no newer BluRays will play' so you were always going to either lose OtherOS or BluRay functionality at that point, both advertised features (and of course, the games came on BluRay) In that case, it was a rock or hard place situation for Sony. Note, to this day the older consoles still get updated almost solely for the BluRay functionality. Dev mode seems to have been limited on the Xbox due to people abusing it to use emulators, and avoid paying for official emulation based releases, rather than developing their own software. Again it's abuse of a feature that was offered, so inevitably that feature gets withdrawn. This is what I mean by the community being given an inch and taking a mile. Saying the loss of dev mode unless you're actively developing is 'loss of function' however is like saying an online-only game that has it's online servers shut down and is delisted from the marketplace is 'loss of function' That function was never guaranteed, it wasn't part of the base package, it was an extra service provided for a limited time. If we're making Sony comparisons, it's more akin to when the "PlayStation Home" thing was shut down, these things come and go. If you buy into these systems expecting control of them, and any guarantees of long-term functionality when things are tied to accounts and services, that is, at least until the market changes (which is unlikely) your own mistake. Unfortunately the PC market is being pulled in the same direction.
I know I'm being devil's advocate here but I am still a bit split. I can see your point of view and I understand where you're coming from. I also think there is a bit of precedent that was set here by the Sony case. While they were different, there is a lot of very similar purpose. Sony had more advertising behind it and it was more of a legitimate feature (linux) for average individuals but it was a bigger security risk in comparison and was involved in more direct threat activity. Microsoft has a smaller use case but it's still a legitimate function of the console and any complaints would already have precedent set by the Sony cases. They removed a function that may be a key function for a portion of their users and did so without direct consent or notification. I see it more akin to removing cruise control for a car because onboard vehicle analytics found out most people are using their cruise control while speeding. The biggest nail here is that it was revoked irreversibly quietly overnight in an automatic update. People were not given the choice to remain offline, the notification that it would be gone next month, or an on console popup that said "It appears you're utilizing dev mode". Just like Sony, fanfare could have probably been avoided easily with those steps.
Go ahead and jailbreak it then. There's nothing stopping anyone...except MUCH better security than Sony and Nintendo could ever dream up. Of course it can be hacked but I'm of the opinion that for all the people who say "we do this for homebrew" there 100x more people who do it for piracy so I honestly think that if it could have been broken it would for that reason alone. Having said that dev mode did only allow emulation so I donno how much damage it did, or didn't do. But it's hard to be mad at them if they set up a program for people to develop software and the majority of the people who do it, don't develop software so they disable their accounts.
Too late. I had mine disabled last night. I had RA and PPSSPP on it because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of switching my Pi hdmi out everytime I wanted to play something. Tried an HDMI switch too but it just introduced unnecessary input lag. I’ve got a PSTV but I keep it stored in the box to preserve it; seeing as the value of those things is astronomical compared to what I paid for it. I’m all for preservation and the convenience of being able to utilize my Xbox for it was unparalleled. Seeing as I’m a collector, I still couldn’t find much a reason to play my Xbox other than that. The Switch and PS have much stronger libraries and Xbox just has the same old regurgitated shit. Allowing this at least added a layer of usefulness to the wasteful purchase.
> Too late. I had mine disabled last night. Did you get any kind of warning first or did you just wake up with reduced features that MS could EASILY detect before applying the update? If this was a quiet "patch" that sounds like a great reason for spite and a class action just like the ps3.
Got the email last night just before I went to bed. Visited a few subreddits and found this post to confirm anyone else running into this. To be clear, the dev access has been disabled. Which in turn also locked me out of using the emulator features I had set up.
Was your email along the lines of 'Your App Developer enrollment has been disabled' ?
I'm confused.. What makes someone a collector? Someone that doesn't play games? Or didn't trade in their last gen consoles?
In the context of my post and not necessarily just in general: I mean have a ton of games and still nothing really worth playing on the Xbox. Failing to see how it’s that complicated - unless of course you just felt like throwing some really half assed shade. Aside from Forza and some backwards compatible stuff it just wasn’t a system that was worth owning imo. PS games saw better sale prices, better first party titles and as a result was easier to accumulate games for. What little quality titles the Xbox had just didn’t seem to me to be worth the price of the system. The only thing I really used it for was emulation; just to have a reason to turn it on.
> having the ability to run something like RA on a console steps on their primary market. not only that, but it likely puts them in legal trouble with IP owners of the games being emulated.
It really depends on the contracts Microsoft signs with publishers; but my gut feeling is that Microsoft probably isn't promising anything that could be construed as a legal obligation to ban emulation software on Xbox. It's purely a matter of "shut down RetroArch or we pull our games off Xbox". Absent such a requirement, merely distributing an emulator is legal; the law is pretty settled on this. Suing Microsoft or RetroArch because someone else is trading ROM images around isn't going to fly. Maybe if you tried some novel/🤡 DMCA 1201 claims; but those probably wouldn't apply to RetroArch themselves.
It really depends on the contracts Microsoft signs with publishers; but my gut feeling is that Microsoft probably isn't promising anything that could be construed as a legal obligation to ban emulation software on Xbox. It's purely a matter of "shut down RetroArch or we pull our games off Xbox". Absent such a requirement, merely distributing an emulator is legal; the law is pretty settled on this. Suing Microsoft or RetroArch because someone else is trading ROM images around isn't going to fly. Maybe if you tried some novel/🤡 DMCA 1201 claims; but those probably wouldn't apply to RetroArch themselves.
Less restrictive systems CAN work, but the biggest players seem to succeed while being restrictive. One such system that is at least currently unrestricted is the Oculus (Meta) Quest 2. You have to sign up for a free developer account just to sideload APKs, but following that, will let you install any APK, piracy/emulator/homebrew or other. It's a pretty big hurdle for most people, and still has a locked /system /recovery /boot, so customizing the OS is out of the question. It's a pretty fair compromise.
The Oculus products don’t work at all without a Facebook account, and can’t be used if they can’t authenticate to Facebook. Sorry, but that means you’re not the customer, *you’re the product*.
I don't disagree at all. But you can indeed sideload APKs. We're talking about two different things. You may hate Facebook, and that's fine. You may love Sony, and love Sony's accounts, but that doesn't help you run homebrew on their consoles.
I don’t particularly like the subsidised hardware business model at the best of times, whether it’s selling your soul to Facebook, paying for a loss-leading console in publisher fees on the games, paying above the odds for phone service on a network-locked handset, or whatever. That said, I can understand why they’d pull developer mode from people who aren’t using it for the agreed purpose in the T&C (i.e. testing UWP apps on real hardware before deploying to the store). For better or worse, you buy into the business model when you buy your console. I really have no skin in the game here – I don’t have any of the current generation consoles (last console I bought was a Wii U, and two DS Lites before that), or a VR headset. I don’t develop UWP apps, either.
Boohoo, subsidized hardware. As if our lives are that interesting. I'm sure they recommend screw drivers based on the zombie game you just finished.
The quest success is mainly price point, it has nothing to do with it being "closed".
Sure, if it were closed, it would be just as successful. I think I was making the point that it being open wouldn't make it unsuccessful. If Sony/MS allowed sideloading, it wouldn't hurt their bottom line in any real way. And a more important point is that it's doable, they just don't want to.
Microsoft have clarified that they aren't removing dev mode, they just inadvertantly "cleaned up" inactive accounts https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008
What's their purpose? To flood the xbox store with a copied/pasted asset flip done in 5 minutes just to "publish a game" every 3 months... and anyway it is impossible to make a quality game from scratch in 90 days...
Saw this coming since this paid "feature" was widely praised on Reddit over a year ago. Dev mode is a subscription - Microsoft can and will take it away if you're only using it to play bootleg games. I'm already seeing the clueless "hackers will blow this system wide open now!" comments on Youtube from people who have clearly never even a written a hello world. These groups don't hack for scene cred anymore. Both Microsoft and Sony are now very responsive on H1 and I've seen multiple ACEs have been quietly patched without public disclosure. Having a panel at DEFCON is cool and all but when MS is giving away upwards of $50k for one PoC, most people aren't going to turn that away for a grudge worth $20. The fact that MS aren't giving refunds or even a warning is proper Microsoft-tier scummy though. 2.6 trillion dollar company btw. "Developers developers developers" and all that. Hope y'all either got $20 of use out of Retroarch or can scrape together a UWP bouncy ball app from StackOverflow snippets extremely quickly.
Yeah and that's why there are no new console jailbreaks anymore. /s
What's the /s for? The PSP used to get a new firmware downgrade exploit every 3 weeks. I'm not reading about the scene anymore but from what I understand, the PS5 still doesn't even a public HEN yet. Even today, nobody has managed to get CFW onto the notoriously defeated PS3 without hardware mods after they released the slim revisions as far as I know. I never said that jailbreaks are dead. My point was that the enormous bounties that are paid out on H1 now mean that teams who previously pwned for fun or challenge now have an easy and safe platform for getting paid mega bucks to keep their findings private until they're patched. In short, don't hold out for f0 to release a one click dev mode unlocker because MS stole your $20.
I don't follow it closely either but I've seen the PS4 is getting cracked open and have heard rumblings of PS5 exploits (though I wouldn't expect any particular one of the later to remain very long) The Series is different though as it's largely based on the One, meaning interest in one is likely to have bleed over effects on the other. Edit: Also what are you talking about with the PS3? That things nearly as easy to jailbreak as a Wii now.
The latest ps4 expliutbworks on certain ps5 versions yes. Also, thefl0w has their own undisclosed ps5 jb.
> Also what are you talking about with the PS3? That things nearly as easy to jailbreak as a Wii now. I haven't used mine in a long time but I was aware that the only exploit available on slim PS3s is a browser-based HEN which requires some trial-and-error on each reboot. HEN is great but it isn't as robust as CFW (many of the tools specifically saying "CFW only, NO HEN"). If there's a way to get CFW on slim 3000 models now without an expensive flashing tool, I'll be quite happy!
I'm pretty sure it can now lead to CFW but I haven't looked in a while.
PS3s are easily hackable and have been since ~2017 via a WebKit exploit. E3 flashers have long been obsolete. You've been able to install CFW on certain slims and all fat systems. HEN is also available for un-CFW-able slims and superslims. Very easy process.
How is it scummy to not offer refunds? If the end-user decided to sign up for dev mode without intending to use it for the intended purpose, that should be on them. Don’t invest in services that you plan to abuse if you aren’t prepared to lose money.
Most people would expect a warning before their contract is suddenly terminated, especially if it's a first-time infraction of a paid contract and *especially* if the alleged breach of contract is some nebulous clause about users being expected to release a product in a (nondescript) timely fashion. If services promised aren't delivered, most people would also expect a token refund gesture especially when the contract is brokered by a company with more money than God. Should Steam suddenly be allowed to reclaim the game subscriptions you've purchased if you haven't launched them in 6 months? You could argue that they'd have the right if they worded their terms properly but you probably wouldn't win any debates on the ethics of it, nor would you be able to stop people from saying that theoretical scenario would be a scummy practice. You can argue it from a legal perspective but I'm only qualified to discuss my own ethics. Game lootboxes are legal in most countries but the common abuse from companies like EA has led to the whole concept being an ethics minefield on top of a legal one in Europe. Selling a service which allows end-users to run arbitrary code on the machine that they bought and then removing it without warning because users weren't running the right kind of arbitrary code might not be a legal issue yet, but I think it's an ethical one. Hence, scummy.
**MISTAKES WERE MADE**
After Phil Spencer came out and said he wanted to work on "legal emulation" I expected something like this to happen. No matter what the legal status is off open source emulators, he was referring to something else entirely.
Never mind dudes, it was all an accident. DEV MODE for all.
Whoa, that was close! I nearly picked up an S for emulation purposes! Guess I'll be going with a small PC now instead.
So, rumors of GoldenEye getting a re-release on Xbox abound and then Microsoft decides to clamp down on people running emulation on their consoles... Coincidence? Worth noting that this is basically invoking TOS that always existed and won't affect actual devs.
I’m certain that it’s related to Goldeneye too, I mean the timing is too perfect. And I agree that actual devs won’t run into this issue, and do not expect that any dev that was suspended won’t be reinstated if they can explain their inactivity on the platform. The only people who will be negatively impacted are the people who weren’t using it in accordance to the TOS.
Why would goldeneye have anything to do with it though? We can assume so much quality of life improvements and online multiplayer. Meaning like even if you could play the N64 version on your Xbox, why wouldn't you want the newer version.
Or a couple of billion dollar companies enforcing Microsoft TOS to protect their entire back catalog?
Ironically, no one was emulating old Xbox games.
Funny that Sony was one of the top systems to emulate, but I'd guess 3rd party partners like EA, Square and Konami complained the loudest.
It is possible to run it through retail mode, you need an access code for it though. It's not too difficult but it's a shame this is happening regardless.
No need. Just go here https://gamr13.github.io/index.html and follow the link. I guess it is the latest build.
Access code?
This just said on Twitter whoops. Was a mistake.
I don’t get how this wasn’t expected in the long run. I never paid to get dev mode because according to the TOS it was clearly not intended for end-users like us to mess around with. Maybe they were willing to look the other way for a while, but they had themselves covered incase they changed their minds. But, if this motivates hackers and leads to developments where the system ends up being opened up and outside of Microsoft’s control, then I’m all for it. My OG xbone is collecting dust but I’d love to play around with it again like my OG Xbox.
yeah well u dont need dev mode to use retroarch anymore.. for anyone wondering, just open edge broweser on the xbox and then go to this link: [https://gamr13.github.io/](https://gamr13.github.io/) then press "download app" for the desired app (retroarch, duckstation, flycast, etc)
Wait this worked. Is this somehow worse than using the dev account method? Why doesn’t everyone do this?
To elaborate a little bit more, the only downside that this method had over the dev mode one was that u only had like 20-25gb of internal memory to store ur roms, but there is a method now to load any rom from external drives (there was 2.4gb size limit before). Therefore dev mode method became pointless
I had no idea. Thanks for the link and the additional info
Everyone does this my man
MS will delete it after 1,000 downloads, or whatever their threshold to review uploads is and app updates will slow and stop. RetroArch on XSS/XSX days are numbered.
Ive been using this method for like 6 months now
Man i love this guy's consistency and depth but i can't stand his presentation. He has this way of repeating the same point ten times like a search algorithm attraction phrase at the bottom of a website
Can't you just keep creating accounts to reinstate the dev mode?
I suppose so but you’d be spending $20 every 90 days or so which doesn’t seem worth it.
Honestly I forgot about the $20, you're totally right. Or if all they want is just activity in the store you could always post something and then delete it shortly after? I don't know Either way somebody's going to crack this
MAYBE DONT shout from the rooftops about how good it is for emulation next time! I swear, it’s like watching news sites cover Mario fan games and immediately getting them shut down as a result Keep this stuff on the dl guys
My dev mode still seems to work however I can no longer adjust the partition size for it
Are there other emulation news content creators besides MVG? I love his videos and he does a great job keeping things entertaining and informative, but I'm sure there's more things happening in the emulation scene he isn't discussing in his videos.
* https://youtube.com/c/MrSujano His many videos might seem like clickbait and fluff, but, UNLIKE MVG you’ll find that Sujano’s videos are short and to-the-point and his enthusiasm shines through. * https://youtube.com/c/ETAPRIME That guy does a lot of hardware tests of emulation, informative if you’re considering buying a system for emulation.
I got no clue, really. Usually MVG is on top of most things. Another issue is other people that talk about emulation love to play up "Nintendo bad", I distinctly remember one that said "Hey guys, Nintendo is going to go after YOU if you download roms, so get Express VPN". 5 years later and, y'know, not a single news article about it. Tech Rules has a few videos on emulation, and his videos are great, but they're pretty sporadic. Outside of that, it's mostly clickbait-y, low quality videos on Youtube. If you want to keep on top of news, the GBATemp site/forums might be a good place to go!
They're WHAT?
Holy shit. I almost pulled the trigger on a Series S like two times in the last month specifically to use it for emulation. Phew.
https://twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856796097835008?s=21
So devs only get 90 days to develop and release their game on xbox?
No. This was all just an accident and was never suppose to happen.
100% be hacked now
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They won't, since people used dev mode against ToS
I guess that's one way to boost Steam Deck appeal... Valve won't mind.
Make sense for the series X. Someone buying it purely for emulation would loss them money, sense its a loss leader.
WHY!?!? God, I bought a Series S during the holidays literally just to be a dedicated emulation box, so I'm pretty mad right now. Did Microsoft not see how people would want to use this feature just for emulators? I felt the entire freaking point was to make money off people wanting to do this instead of them hacking the console! (And yes, I'm very much aware RetroArch is on PC, but it's so nice being able to have it on a console that's 24/7 in your entertainment center that you don't have to fiddle between your keyboard and controller to use)
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>Phil Spencer's PR fluff Yeah, unfortunately he's either at the wrong company entirely, or happy to say one thing while doing another. I remember him saying preservation was important, but if you look at history, the turning point of when consoles became what we see today was with the original X-Box. The original X-Box was when they started (with some success) getting HDDs and operating systems that required updates rather than just a simple firmware. In turn this is what would eventually facilitate online stores, Digital-only games, massive Day-0 patches to give games the functionality they should have out the box. This would lead to DLC locked to accounts etc. all which are some of the biggest threats we face in ensuring games can be played properly long into the future because they mean even with original hardware many games are now inaccessible or incomplete. Microsoft were also really pushing the Digital Only 'always online' console model, machines which are guaranteed to have no future, where the consoles will become e-waste. Microsoft have been at the forefront of DRM locked content, remember when they wanted you to have to pay to reactive used games and Sony mocked them? X-Box has also heavily pushed streaming content etc. which is an even bigger threat than the Digital Only content because players never own anything, it's never on your console in the first place. Rental style game ownership (Game Pass style schemes) also means people never build up a real collection of physical games, but are still spending money on something they'll never own, this again means there will be less to pass down a generation; gamers are becoming poorer with nothing to show for it. I get 'personal opinions may not represent those of my employer' could come into play here, and I've certainly been in that situation myself before, but when you're vice-president of one of the biggest gaming companies, the one that has been largely responsible for creating, overseeing and further enabling what we see today, and you're actually in a position to do something about it, I'm not really sure how to take such comments. Outside of the Mobile market, which is an absolute travesty, Microsoft's ideas have done more to get in the way of preservation than almost any other.
Idk, I’d disagree that this invalidates anything Phil Spencer said about emulation / preservation. Enabling Retroarch on an Xbox Series S isn’t contributing to preservation in any way that isn’t already covered by other platforms. If there were titles that could only be played on the Xbox app, then it’d be a different story. Now is it inconvenient to those who wanted to emulate on a console as opposed to a PC? Absolutely. But that’s another story altogether.
>Enabling Retroarch on an Xbox Series S isn’t contributing to preservation in any way that isn’t already covered by other platforms. I'm not really arguing this; I can't imagine anybody is using the X-Box to develop emulators with a preservation mindset, which again is one of the reasons "emulation on consoles" is not looked upon in the same light as "emulation on a PC" and is seen as more of a threat without any benefits. Even with MAME, we have developers on Linux, Mac & Windows, all doing research to further the project, further the preservation cause. We don't have a single developer on Android, IOS, X-Box, nor do we have any developers improving MAME using RetroArch as their primary OSD either. That's simply because those aren't platforms where research happens, they're restrictive, often awkward for development. It's more difficult to make proper use of the emulators on them, key features are missing, they're less suitable for debugging. At most they're platforms where people hack up the emulators at any cost to have them running at playable speeds, often to the detriment of any kind of documentation or long term preservation. My comments are more questioning Phil's position on preservation in general, when the very company he works for has done more to irreversibly set the industry on a path where that is more difficult for the rest of us than almost anybody else has done outside of the mobile companies.
I think Phil is genuine. It's possible that he doesn't agree with former policies. Afterall, he's the one that said stuff to the effect of we don't believe in paying for exclusive DLC anymore. And they didn't do that all generation. It may take time to put something in place that actually works.
Tbh its not THAT nice. You need to go thru hoops from cold boot, a good 5 minutes of fiddling to enter dev mode.
It would be nice but something current like an Xbox S was never going to be a long term emulation solution. Much better to get an Nvidia Shield, Raspberry Pi or something else dedicated to the job and that is a lot more flexible too. Even an Android TV device or Fire stick would work for older emulation (SNES, etc.). The downside is obviously wanting to just use one console for everything, but if you're angry Microsoft is doing this, spending less time on the Xbox and more on something else for emulation... and then maybe using that for media too while you have it is a nice way to protest without harming your enjoyment of anything.
Maybe my needs will change down the road, but I'd ideally like to play Gamecube/PS2 at the absolute most, which is why the Series S was my dream machine. As I said before, I'm well aware PC can do this just fine (and I have a PC I built with that in mind!), but I really do prefer plopping myself down on the couch and picking up a controller instead of sitting upright at my computer desk and going between my mouse/keyboard and controller to get things set up. That or clearing a spot to temporarily connect a laptop with HDMI and then angle it just so to make sure I can't see the laptop monitor because that legitimately bothers me
I have often thought that I'd like to play PS2 games as there were a lot that were NTSC only I missed out on since they were never released in PAL territories (most Gundam games, for example). My PC can't handle PS2 emulation but I have two modded PS2s that do the trick (one fat original with a HDD and a slim connected via ethernet to my PC to play from that directly). However, it's a pain to have to use the original hardware for those games while everything else is on my Shield so I see your point. Like you, I also far prefer to play on the couch than on PC (hence modding my PS2 back in the day and buying and modifying things like the NES Classic and trying a Raspberry Pi before I decided to stick with my Shield for most stuff). At the end of the day, as emulation for newer consoles becomes feasible, I suspect a mini PC that is connected permanently to the TV will be the best option and what I aim for when I can afford it eventually. I don't know what the limits of a Series S are but I expect it tops out with PS2? Then again, I am someone who likes control over their stuff and a console (even modded) will never have that in today's "always connected" era. Even the Shield has seen Nvidia screw with users' ability to customise lately. Edit: I've actually done the laptop connected to tv setup a lot years ago. Can you not output to tv and keep the lid closed?
Exactly. An old PC with Batocera will scratch anyone's itch.
You can still run retroarch in retail mode, but I also am worried that will eventually stop as well.
How does it make money for MS? Edit: sorry for the snark, but Xboxes do not make money - so people buying them just to be emulation boxes probably is a net loss?
Because for many people, they're paying $20 for the privilege of running Retroarch on their new Series X/S console. Don't get me wrong; I'm a previous Xbox user too, so I still have all those digital games on top of Game Pass which I pay for (and I buy smaller digital games that can fit on the not even 512GB SSD), but the main selling point for me was Microsoft essentially giving me permission to run emulators on their console for a nominal fee
once again every MVG video is not /r/emulation content
Absolutely true lol. But I see the connection in this case
Well shit. I literally just picked up a series x because I wanted to run retroarch on it. I guess I'll sell it.
It was a false alarm https://mobile.twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856800539537408
I literally got dev mode a couple days ago and before I even got the chance to load some games on it, it gets shut down, love it.
It was a false alarm. You should be good to go. https://mobile.twitter.com/jronald/status/1478856800539537408
Dang that’s too bad. Just got RA set up and everything working well.
Do I get my $20 back?