Owners of the new Xbox One console are being warned against following the advice of a prank posted online that can shut down their console.

The message claims to make the Xbox one compatible with games designed for its predecessor the 360, which the newer console is unable to play. However, when the advice in the message is followed it wrecks the console by putting it into a perpetual start-up loop.

"To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible and performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable," wrote Larry Hryb, director of programming for Microsoft's Xbox Live network in a tweet.