Can Alpha Towers play retail Xbox games?

And also the debug/dev kits. Asking here since X360's XDKs can't.

 

No. Easiest way to explain it with my limited knowledge.

 

Hmm, then is there a reason to own one aside from collector/historical value? What can it do?

 

Not in the slightest. It is literally a PC, versus a console made using some PC style hardware. What's the point to any of this, really? It's an important piece of gaming history, and it can play the games that I did release for it.

 

There is also a XDK (pc side of things) released, so you can compile the samples that are included, and maybe make some homebrew for it (and port it/upgrade it to xbox retail)... for learning and historical purposes ofcourse because xbmc wont work and who actualy owns a (franken)alpha and is gonna run your game?
But you could, maybe port an emulator or downport some samples for fun. +- 80 hours of fun I gues... better then wasting it on skyrim only to delete your save afterwards XD... sorry, a game-pc/-console for only a few that understand the fun.

 

People want to be able to run original xbox games on PC hardware. That's the interest.

 

Which you cant do with an alpha kit, which is what I opened with. There is zero chance of a retail game working on an alpha kit.

 

Alpha I/II did not use Intel Boot Initiative , so can not run retail/xdk .xbe