You Can (More Easily) Turn Your Xbox One Into A Dev Kit Now

Microsoft promised that every Xbox One sold could be turned into a development kit free of charge, and they were right about that. The ability was actually possible almost three years ago, provided you didn’t mind running the risk of putting your console into a boot loop.

But at the corporation’s annual Build conference earlier this morning, the company announced it was rolling out the feature to all consoles in a preview form.

It’s called Xbox Dev Mode and, as mentioned before the jump, it’ll be initially available to all consoles in a beta form. The full release, which lets users build, test and tweak with development in a Universal Windows Program world, is due out later this winter. There is a slight catch: if you want to access all of the Dev Mode’s features, you’ll need to pay US$19 for a Dev Center account.

To flick the switch, you’ll have to download the Xbox Dev Mode app and then register with your account. From there, a single button press will reboot the console into Dev Mode. You can then pair the console with your Windows 10 PC and Visual Studio 2015, from which point you’ll be able to remotely deploy applications.

Once your console is put into dev mode, you’ll get an additional tool called “Dev Home” which has a range of options affecting accounts, what games and apps are on the console, the hostname and Sandbox info for the console, and more. You can see some of those towards in the video above from 3m 40s.

You’ll need a minimum of 30GB free storage to get Dev Mode running. You’ll also have to be a part of the Windows Insider program, and the Xbox One has to be connected to a network via an ethernet cable.