As previously reported on, the hacker group known across the internet H4LT claimed responsibility for leaking the Xbox One Development tools alongside its documentation. However the documentation came along with a few surprises, revealing that a seventh core that was previously off limits to developers as it was reserved exclusively for running background operations, is now available for use, according to a report by EuroGamer.

Prior to the leaks, since October in fact, developers were allowed access to 50% to 80% to this seventh core which is likely responsible for the Xbox One having comparable performance with the PS4 for some games released in last quarter of 2014. However in order to achieve this performance boost, some features must be sacrificed such as the voice commands that are used with Kinect. This does however include the admittedly rather useful “Xbox Record That” feature.

It’s worth noting that an extra core to use doesn’t actually mean you’re guaranteed increased performance or better games, that falls to the development team and their use of the tools offered to them. With any amount of luck this will help bring the Xbox One back into the game a bit more.

The internet has been paying attention to LizardSquad and Anonymous recently, overlooking and partially ignoring the other hacking groups that are out there. One such group that you may know of is H4LT. They leaked the Xbox One Software Development Kit onto the internet and tweeted screenshots and the like directly to Xbox themselves in a bid to draw attention to the fact.

When asked if there was a point to leaking the SDK, they stated: “We leaked it to the community because if something is shared then.. progress is achieved faster than alone”…” Something kept between us will not achieve anything. Share it with the community = creativity and research. Shared is how it should be.”

“The SDK will basically allow the community to reverse and open doors towards homebrew applications being present on the Xbox One.” They also said that they do have plans for further software leaks in the future, though didn’t give specifics on the matter.

[Source]