by Dave Thier via Forbes

Three years ago, Microsoft made a tantalizing remark about the future of the Xbox One. It was a game console designed to foster creativity and development, the company said, and to that end any retail unit could be converted into a development kit. Microsoft will finally be making good on that promise, it announced at its annual build conference in San Francisco.

“Windows is the best platform for the vast community of game developers,” said Xbox boss Phil Spencer, via The Verge. “Windows is and will continue to be an open development ecosystem where anyone can build, deploy, and service their games and applications.” And those games will run on the whole ecosystem of Windows devices, from smartphones to desktop PCs and the Xbox console.

In order to take advantage, you need to join the Windows 10 insider program, run Windows 10 on a PC that has a wired connection to your Xbox One and have the latest versions of Visual Studio and Windows (via polygon). The feature is available as  preview today, with the major caveat that it wont be fully ready for primetime until sometime in the summer. This doesn’t mean that the Xbox One all of a sudden became as open as Windows: people can make whatever games they want, but anything they do make is subject to the same approval process that games go through now.