S-4'N3 writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft has disconnected approximately 600,000 Xbox users from Xbox Live because the devices they are using have been modified, either with software or with new chips, to play pirated games. 'Microsoft confirmed that it had banned a "small percentage" of the 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide.
Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console 'violates' the service's 'terms of use' and would result in a player being disconnected.'"
Apparently some people have gone as far as calling death threats [sankakucomplex.com] to a "Director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox LIVE" and his wife (theres also irc logs where he came to say it on #360banned)
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
The great thing about online console play (the only thing, really, that it has over PCs) is their closed nature. It's much, much harder to cheat on a console than on a PC game.
Don't get me wrong. I fully support their right to mod their own hardware. But I don't want to play them online.
So, now if you want to go to eBay and pick up a used console, you are at HIGH RISK. (This goes for the entire used XBOX market.) MS really should set up some kind of verification system where you can call in a serial number and check an XBOX or "preowned" system where you can get a guaranteed, stamped approval. I'd bet that pretty soon, we are going to see a flooded market of XBOXes that won't be able to connect. Imagine what Craigslist is about to look like.
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
There aren't that many good online LIVE games IMO, so it makes a lot of sense to have the cheap "dead" console to play the majority of the enjoyable ones. And if you really want to play LIVE, just mooch off your friend:) DOUBLE BAM!
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
Except that the last ban wave will cripple some offline features as well, such as HDD installs (a *big* loss since the DVD drive sounds like a jet engine when spinning), being able to move savegames to other consoles (no more playing you're savegames at a friends place), and I think even some of the media center functions. Also, you won't be getting any game patches anymore, which is also a major downside since so many console games are released full of bugs these days.
If you read the thread I was asking what the "it" is and what it "doesn't do" so that I could communicate with him. He then told me I was an illiterate faggot so if I wanted to reply to his line of discourse I could either talk about my sexuality and relevant exploits or I could discuss why I couldn't understand what he wrote. Which would you have preferred? Well too bad, that was rhetorical!
If you have any idea exactly which point he was arguing with I'd be happy to have non grammatical-focused discourse on the subject
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
99.9% of them are people who want to play free games, or cheat on games. People who cheat on games ruin the experience for everybody else. Most modded Xboxes were modded by some guy at a games store, anyway, and that guy charged for it, it's not like these guys went through the effort of modding it themselves... they just paid some goon so they could steal games.
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it. Slashdot pretends this group is the larger percentage, but Slashdot is wrong about a good many things.
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it.
Actually, there's no reason to mod your xbox to write software for it.
There's a hobbyist dev kit! It's a free download, even. You can write code for the XBox on it for free, and some schools are doing this. Now, if you want to install that code onto your own XBox... you need to pay an annual membership fee for the service that lets you do this, and then you can load the code onto your own unmodded xbox, and you can connect to it with a debugger and stuff. No hacks or mods necessary (in fact they interfere).
(And that fee also covers what you need to submit the stuff you write to the process that lets other people download it, and lets you get paid for that. I have bought a game or two that were written this way. There's some innovative stuff in there.)
You don't HAVE TO PAY to put code on your own box. You just have to pay if you want that code to interact with Microsoft's servers.
If you don't want to play on XBox live you can do whatever the hell you want to your Xbox. Just don't try and connect to Microsoft's servers. It's very simple. It's not really nefarious.
You really think so? The "backups" that most people use in their modded XBoxes are backups from some guy on a torrent site who himself probably only rented the game. How are these people their best customers? They probably play more games and have higher gamer scores, and might even pay for XBox Live Gold, but MS still isn't making as much from them as someone who buys only a few games a year.
Cheaters are not their concern (at least, it certainly doesn't seem to be). Microsoft's best customers are not so much the people that buy their consoles - it's the people that buy games for their consoles. The argument here is that people are modding their xboxes to sidestep Microsoft's DRM protection in order to play "backup" games. The people doing this are not particularly interested in creatively modding their xbox so much as being able to (via someone else's creative work) download torrented disc images, burn them to dvd, and play them on their xboxes.
The only problem with this approach is that some (undoubtedly small) percentage of users who are in fact doing creative things by modding their xbox could also fall victim to being a false positive from whatever method Microsoft is using to identify the modders.
so it shouldn't be a problem for those who aren't modding to play pirated copies.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the XBOX 360 mod is basically flashing the DVD drive so that it can load games from backup DVD's.
The mod does not however remove the protection such an extent that homebrews can be loaded.
So, assuming this is still correct (haven't had a a 360 for over a year), what can you possibly do on a modded xbox 360 if you aren't copying games?
So, assuming this is still correct (haven't had a a 360 for over a year), what can you possibly do on a modded xbox 360 if you aren't copying games?
This is still correct and the answer is there is nothing you can do with a modded xbox except play pirated games. End of story.
Some people are confusing the two because this wasn't the case with the original gen 1 xbox, others are confusing them because they don't know the full story and I guess a few are deliberately blurring the issue because they want to believe in the nobility of modding consoles or something. However MS make a pretty sophisticated (.NET based) dev kit available for free so you can write your own software, and will even help you sell them to a huge worldwide audience. You don't have hypervisor level access but then you don't need it to write your own software.
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
Got news for you. The console manufacturers- not just MS- are in this for the money, and enthusiasm for the console doesn't really do that. Matter of fact, they probably don't want people finding out too much about the console anyway, because that opens the way to homebrew and/or piracy, regardless of the intention of the original hackers. (Even if it wasn't used for piracy, MS and its gaming rivals would rather you could only use your console via their official channels, which likely make them more money).
Nothing new here; 25 to 30 years ago, Atari tried to suppress information about their VCS console and 400/800 computers to stop other people making their own games and reducing Atari's slice of the pie. (They did, however, and their efforts beat the heck out of Atari's third-rate offerings).
In short, MS et al don't care about enthusiasm. Their "best customers" are the ones who spend lots of money on games through official channels.
(BTW, though I disagreed with the above comment, I didn't consider it "flamebait".)
There's a large, officially supported homebrew scene on XBL. They even have a channel to publish your games and get paid for them. There's a lot of officially published info on the system, including getting into the graphics hardware and creating networked games. There's not a whole lot you can't do with their system other than not writing managed code (which may/may not be a big deal depending on what you're doing). I'd say the main intent here is to get rid of pirates.
Yeah XNA is great for 360. But as it's directly supported by MS, people don't need to mod or hack their 360 to develop homebrew software for it. Which just strengths my point that only reason people mod their 360 is to play pirated copies.
When an Xbox 360 console is banned, there are offline features that are disabled too - the most significant are playing games from the hard disk, and using the console as a Windows Media Center Extender. Once banned, the console will corrupt the saves on memory cards and hard disks that it comes into contact with so that they can't be used on a non-banned console without re-downloading them from Live.
"bereft of connectivity he plays alone, if he hadnt been nailed to the couch hed be playing outside with his friends! this Xbox has ceased to be! its gone offline to join the choir invisible! this is an ex-box!"
Which is why so many now mod the controller not the console. It has become very popular to mod the controllers for turbo fire and the like. The reason this sort of thing works is because of the brain dead console development expectations, say it with me "trusting the client is never right".
More games need to enforce maximum rates of fire and the like.
Why would they want to sell more 360s? Don't they still lose money on each one? My understanding was that they did, but made it up on the games and such. Buying an extra 360 isn't going to cause a user to buy more copies of the game, so why would they be trying to encourage more 360 sales that cut into their bottom line?
Small price to pay for MS to get a user back on an unmodded 360 that won't be able to play torrented games, resulting in more game sales, plus more recurring Live credit purchases.
Look people, it's not that tough - if you're going to mod your box, then don't put it online where anybody that wants to can inspect it. You can't have it both ways.
Yes, but with this recent ban wave, Microsoft crippled some non-XBL capabilities. For example, you can't install games to your local hard drive anymore
I don't believe most of the modding community is bothered by the ban from XBL. But this recent ban wave also cripples some offline capabilities as well. For example, if you've been banned you can't install games to your local hard drive anymore.
Congratulations, you just compared two completely divisions of Microsoft. Also, this is nowhere near the first console ban Microsoft has done (they did a good job hitting the users right after the first DVD drive mods came out) and hardly any false positives if any have come up. Being a closed system (unlike PCs) they can tell when something is different about the hardware.
I took it into a shop [the Xbox], there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me [chipped it]. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I'll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I've paid the money back.
I've probably saved about £600 and I've copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I've downloaded or I've taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.
So at what point do you put two and two together and realize that getting kicked off playing online is not such a bad thing if you've saved £600? Is there really any wonder why XBox Live wants to deny you service? How exactly do you maintain outrage at being banned?
His sob story was going pretty good until he got up to those last paragraphs of admission and even saying he'd never do it again (implying he is wrong).
I still think they should lower the prices. There are 16-year-old kids out there, they don't earn money so they go screaming to their parents saying, 'Can you buy me this game?'
Their parents should say "No. You buy it yourself. Go earn some money." And why should they lower the prices if people are buying them as it is? I guess normal supply-and-demand isn't good enough for people that don't want to pay for their entertainment. It should be cheaper for the sake of being cheaper...
Fair enough, one game once in a while but the amount of games coming out, good games, everyone wants to play them all.
I would love to have a 100 acre ranch near where I work, too. Unfortunately, they're too expensive.
My favorite quote.
I play with my mates all the time. It's just a good laugh, we all sit there chatting, playing games. Now I don't know what to do.
How about sit there and chat with your mates? Or is playing video games the only thing you and your mates know how to do, and you can't actually have fun without it. *sigh*
Mow lawns? Yard work? Do stuff for your parents? I know it's a strikingly new idea to most teens, but your parents don't HAVE to give an "allowance," and I would dare say that some of them may even be willing to pay their children to do jobs that they otherwise have to pay someone else to do... like clean the house if they do maid stuff, or mow/garden/etc if they hire landscapers, etc...
what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
"enough" is not determined by the buyer. You don't go into a store and argue with the cashier - at least not in most western economies - that the price is too much. You either buy it or you don't.
If Microsoft decides their price is too high and people actually can't afford it and that's why their sales are going down, maybe they'll lower the prices. As it is, people can afford it, Microsoft is making money, and there is little incentive for game publishers to lower their prices.
It's like asking an IT guy to lower his price because, while I and many others can afford his service, I think it's too expensive. You know how you solve that one? You don't hire him to do the work in the first place. I guess with entertainment it's different... because we are entitled to cheap entertainment - "cheap" being defined not by what we can afford or supply/demand but by what we feel like paying - at the expense of these evil corporations...
You mean other than the part where he says he didn't buy the games and just copied them because he felt he was owed them?
guess he paid for the Xbox, he paid money to the guy for 'chipping' his box, and he paid for the Xbox-live service.. what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
If one wants to play a game, one has to buy it. If one can not afford to pay for the game doesn't mean you are allowed to copy it. One is not entitled to the work of another for free just because someone wants it.
Hum. Out of curiosity, does the slashdot crowd think copying 30-40 games and "saving £600" is good? Wouldn't that actually be considered... basically stealing? Maybe he couldn't afford £600 of games. I don't feel sorry for him. Not being able to afford something/something being too expensive doesn't mean you should get it illegally (and it's ok, as long as you couldn't afford it).
I don't think it is good. I think it is terrible. It is exactly people like him who are the ones which are giving the corporations the impression that such things are the norm and therefore they feel they need to do something to stop it.
People like that piss me off because it makes my complaints (non-interoperable hardware, laws damaging freedom/privacy, few legal digital options) seem less valid because there always seems to be 'that guy' standing next to you making faces and fart noises while you attempt to engage in rationale discourse.
I've long argued, especially when it comes to games and entertainment related media, there's absolutely NO justification in copyright infringement EVER
When you start dealing with works that are over 100 years old (which we will soon) my outrage scale falls off VERY quickly.
They may not have lost something, but he still isn't entitled to obtain the works of other's for free just because he wants it.
Exactly.
An artist puts on an exhibit and charges an entrance fee (so he can buy food/housing and then create new art). If I sneak in, the artist hasn't lost anything, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
A movie theater plays some new movie. They're going to play it whether I sneak in the back door or not; unless the theater is full, they're not losing money since I only take up one seat. But that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
(And so on and so forth, as applied to DVDs and streaming video, games and other software, music, pirated satellite/cable tv, hacked cable modems, etc.)
There are some very funny, outraged posts regarding this in the official xbox live forums. Microsoft has also banned players for a number of other offenses, including obscenity and racism, and these posts are great. My favorite:
http://forums.xbox.com/29600400/ShowPost.aspx#29600400 [xbox.com]
First of all let me say that the market for used xbox consoles just got extremely dangerous!
Microsoft needs to set up a system where you can check the status of an xbox console remotely so people can still sell consoles with confidence... 600K Xboxes are about to go up on ebay for a deal that is just too good to pass up.
Secondly if you assume that you do not mind playing games offline that you have pirated, you can still beat the system. Is that not what this is all about?
Step 1: Buy an xbox that has been live banned for very cheap off ebay. It has already been modded, so you dont have to pay for that.
Step 2: Download 50-60 dollar games for free and play them to your hearts content, offline.
After a few games you have already made your money back from the initial purchase of the console.
What if you want to play on xbox live? You have a live console that you do not hack and just enjoy online games there.
You still have to buy games that you want to play online, but there are a lot fewer online games that are worth playing than there are short and sweet single player games that you can just download for free.
360 (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently some people have gone as far as calling death threats [sankakucomplex.com] to a "Director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox LIVE" and his wife (theres also irc logs where he came to say it on #360banned)
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
No Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Funny)
The great thing about online console play (the only thing, really, that it has over PCs) is their closed nature.
The correct anti-response would be: no it isn't.
It's much, much harder to cheat on a console than on a PC game.
The correct anti-response would be: no it isn't.
Don't get me wrong.
The correct anti-response would be: ...No I will?
I fully support their right to mod their own hardware.
The correct anti-response would be: ....No you don't?
But I don't want to play them online.
The correct anti-response would be: I do
Parent
Quit trolling. Pay attention...you can profit here (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
There aren't that many good online LIVE games IMO, so it makes a lot of sense to have the cheap "dead" console to play the majority of the enjoyable ones. And if you really want to play LIVE, just mooch off your friend
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Re:Quit trolling. Pay attention...you can profit h (Score:5, Informative)
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
Except that the last ban wave will cripple some offline features as well, such as HDD installs (a *big* loss since the DVD drive sounds like a jet engine when spinning), being able to move savegames to other consoles (no more playing you're savegames at a friends place), and I think even some of the media center functions. Also, you won't be getting any game patches anymore, which is also a major downside since so many console games are released full of bugs these days.
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Re:No Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
come back to \ .
You have given yourself away, Microsoft Fanboi!
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Re:No Cheating (Score:5, Funny)
If you read the thread I was asking what the "it" is and what it "doesn't do" so that I could communicate with him. He then told me I was an illiterate faggot so if I wanted to reply to his line of discourse I could either talk about my sexuality and relevant exploits or I could discuss why I couldn't understand what he wrote. Which would you have preferred? Well too bad, that was rhetorical!
If you have any idea exactly which point he was arguing with I'd be happy to have non grammatical-focused discourse on the subject
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Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Funny)
learn to read, faggot.
Looks like someone had their XBox360 disconnected from LIVE. /smirk
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
99.9% of them are people who want to play free games, or cheat on games. People who cheat on games ruin the experience for everybody else. Most modded Xboxes were modded by some guy at a games store, anyway, and that guy charged for it, it's not like these guys went through the effort of modding it themselves... they just paid some goon so they could steal games.
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it. Slashdot pretends this group is the larger percentage, but Slashdot is wrong about a good many things.
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
1. With XNA there is 0 argument for writing software for your 360. MS has given you all the tools to write/send software to the 360
2. If you have a modded box, MS really doesn't care, what they care about is if you play online and have potential advantages over other players
If you mod, just don't play it online - they can play offline and do whatever they want, just don't play on Live
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Informative)
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it.
Actually, there's no reason to mod your xbox to write software for it.
There's a hobbyist dev kit! It's a free download, even. You can write code for the XBox on it for free, and some schools are doing this. Now, if you want to install that code onto your own XBox... you need to pay an annual membership fee for the service that lets you do this, and then you can load the code onto your own unmodded xbox, and you can connect to it with a debugger and stuff. No hacks or mods necessary (in fact they interfere).
(And that fee also covers what you need to submit the stuff you write to the process that lets other people download it, and lets you get paid for that. I have bought a game or two that were written this way. There's some innovative stuff in there.)
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't HAVE TO PAY to put code on your own box. You just have to pay if you want that code to interact with Microsoft's servers.
If you don't want to play on XBox live you can do whatever the hell you want to your Xbox. Just don't try and connect to Microsoft's servers. It's very simple. It's not really nefarious.
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Typo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
You really think so? The "backups" that most people use in their modded XBoxes are backups from some guy on a torrent site who himself probably only rented the game. How are these people their best customers? They probably play more games and have higher gamer scores, and might even pay for XBox Live Gold, but MS still isn't making as much from them as someone who buys only a few games a year.
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problem with this approach is that some (undoubtedly small) percentage of users who are in fact doing creative things by modding their xbox could also fall victim to being a false positive from whatever method Microsoft is using to identify the modders.
Parent
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the XBOX 360 mod is basically flashing the DVD drive so that it can load games from backup DVD's.
The mod does not however remove the protection such an extent that homebrews can be loaded.
So, assuming this is still correct (haven't had a a 360 for over a year), what can you possibly do on a modded xbox 360 if you aren't copying games?
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Interesting)
This is still correct and the answer is there is nothing you can do with a modded xbox except play pirated games. End of story.
Some people are confusing the two because this wasn't the case with the original gen 1 xbox, others are confusing them because they don't know the full story and I guess a few are deliberately blurring the issue because they want to believe in the nobility of modding consoles or something. However MS make a pretty sophisticated (.NET based) dev kit available for free so you can write your own software, and will even help you sell them to a huge worldwide audience. You don't have hypervisor level access but then you don't need it to write your own software.
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
Got news for you. The console manufacturers- not just MS- are in this for the money, and enthusiasm for the console doesn't really do that. Matter of fact, they probably don't want people finding out too much about the console anyway, because that opens the way to homebrew and/or piracy, regardless of the intention of the original hackers. (Even if it wasn't used for piracy, MS and its gaming rivals would rather you could only use your console via their official channels, which likely make them more money).
Nothing new here; 25 to 30 years ago, Atari tried to suppress information about their VCS console and 400/800 computers to stop other people making their own games and reducing Atari's slice of the pie. (They did, however, and their efforts beat the heck out of Atari's third-rate offerings).
In short, MS et al don't care about enthusiasm. Their "best customers" are the ones who spend lots of money on games through official channels.
(BTW, though I disagreed with the above comment, I didn't consider it "flamebait".)
Parent
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Informative)
There's a large, officially supported homebrew scene on XBL. They even have a channel to publish your games and get paid for them. There's a lot of officially published info on the system, including getting into the graphics hardware and creating networked games. There's not a whole lot you can't do with their system other than not writing managed code (which may/may not be a big deal depending on what you're doing). I'd say the main intent here is to get rid of pirates.
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Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah XNA is great for 360. But as it's directly supported by MS, people don't need to mod or hack their 360 to develop homebrew software for it. Which just strengths my point that only reason people mod their 360 is to play pirated copies.
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Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No Cheating (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:360 (Score:5, Funny)
does this make it an "Ex-Box"?
thank you thank you... i'm here all week.
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Re:360 (Score:4, Funny)
"bereft of connectivity he plays alone, if he hadnt been nailed to the couch hed be playing outside with his friends! this Xbox has ceased to be! its gone offline to join the choir invisible! this is an ex-box!"
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Re:360 (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why so many now mod the controller not the console. It has become very popular to mod the controllers for turbo fire and the like. The reason this sort of thing works is because of the brain dead console development expectations, say it with me "trusting the client is never right".
More games need to enforce maximum rates of fire and the like.
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Why (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Small price to pay for MS to get a user back on an unmodded 360 that won't be able to play torrented games, resulting in more game sales, plus more recurring Live credit purchases.
Look people, it's not that tough - if you're going to mod your box, then don't put it online where anybody that wants to can inspect it. You can't have it both ways.
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And of course... (Score:4, Informative)
By "disconnecting" it means banning from playing in the "live" online network (which you must pay to play anyway).
It is still possible to play offline games with banned xboxs
Re:And of course... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but with this recent ban wave, Microsoft crippled some non-XBL capabilities. For example, you can't install games to your local hard drive anymore
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I can't believe I'm saying this (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, I hate Microsoft. I think the people who run Microsoft are criminals. I cannot for the life of me believe I'm about to say this:
You buy an XBox 360, you can do whatever you want with it. Mod it to your heart's content.
But the Live network belongs to Microsoft. They have a right to disconnect you if they want.
Now excuse me while I find someone to fulfill my user name.
Re:I can't believe I'm saying this (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe most of the modding community is bothered by the ban from XBL. But this recent ban wave also cripples some offline capabilities as well. For example, if you've been banned you can't install games to your local hard drive anymore.
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Re:I can't believe I'm saying this (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, you just compared two completely divisions of Microsoft. Also, this is nowhere near the first console ban Microsoft has done (they did a good job hitting the users right after the first DVD drive mods came out) and hardly any false positives if any have come up. Being a closed system (unlike PCs) they can tell when something is different about the hardware.
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Good (Score:5, Funny)
"a small percentage" (Score:5, Informative)
600,000 of 20,000,000
there are some who would call this "three percent"
Re:"a small percentage" (Score:4, Informative)
3% is a pretty small percentage.
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Funny First Hand Account (Score:5, Interesting)
I took it into a shop [the Xbox], there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me [chipped it]. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I'll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I've paid the money back.
I've probably saved about £600 and I've copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I've downloaded or I've taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.
So at what point do you put two and two together and realize that getting kicked off playing online is not such a bad thing if you've saved £600? Is there really any wonder why XBox Live wants to deny you service? How exactly do you maintain outrage at being banned?
His sob story was going pretty good until he got up to those last paragraphs of admission and even saying he'd never do it again (implying he is wrong).
Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:5, Insightful)
That entire first-hand-account is ... annoying.
I was pulling my hair out thinking, 'No, why me?'
That's a question easily answered.
It's like telling someone their dog's just died.
He likes his xbox too much.
I still think they should lower the prices. There are 16-year-old kids out there, they don't earn money so they go screaming to their parents saying, 'Can you buy me this game?'
Their parents should say "No. You buy it yourself. Go earn some money." And why should they lower the prices if people are buying them as it is? I guess normal supply-and-demand isn't good enough for people that don't want to pay for their entertainment. It should be cheaper for the sake of being cheaper...
Fair enough, one game once in a while but the amount of games coming out, good games, everyone wants to play them all.
I would love to have a 100 acre ranch near where I work, too. Unfortunately, they're too expensive.
My favorite quote.
I play with my mates all the time. It's just a good laugh, we all sit there chatting, playing games. Now I don't know what to do.
How about sit there and chat with your mates? Or is playing video games the only thing you and your mates know how to do, and you can't actually have fun without it. *sigh*
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Re:Child labor laws (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how it is where you are living, but a 16 yr old American has quite a few legal employment options.
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Re:Child labor laws (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Another loser from the entitlement generation (Score:4, Insightful)
what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
"enough" is not determined by the buyer. You don't go into a store and argue with the cashier - at least not in most western economies - that the price is too much. You either buy it or you don't.
If Microsoft decides their price is too high and people actually can't afford it and that's why their sales are going down, maybe they'll lower the prices. As it is, people can afford it, Microsoft is making money, and there is little incentive for game publishers to lower their prices.
It's like asking an IT guy to lower his price because, while I and many others can afford his service, I think it's too expensive. You know how you solve that one? You don't hire him to do the work in the first place. I guess with entertainment it's different... because we are entitled to cheap entertainment - "cheap" being defined not by what we can afford or supply/demand but by what we feel like paying - at the expense of these evil corporations...
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Re:Another loser from the entitlement generation (Score:5, Informative)
Mmm, how was it he didn't pay?
You mean other than the part where he says he didn't buy the games and just copied them because he felt he was owed them?
guess he paid for the Xbox, he paid money to the guy for 'chipping' his box, and he paid for the Xbox-live service.. what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
If one wants to play a game, one has to buy it. If one can not afford to pay for the game doesn't mean you are allowed to copy it. One is not entitled to the work of another for free just because someone wants it.
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Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:5, Insightful)
Hum. Out of curiosity, does the slashdot crowd think copying 30-40 games and "saving £600" is good? Wouldn't that actually be considered ... basically stealing? Maybe he couldn't afford £600 of games. I don't feel sorry for him. Not being able to afford something/something being too expensive doesn't mean you should get it illegally (and it's ok, as long as you couldn't afford it).
I don't think it is good. I think it is terrible. It is exactly people like him who are the ones which are giving the corporations the impression that such things are the norm and therefore they feel they need to do something to stop it.
People like that piss me off because it makes my complaints (non-interoperable hardware, laws damaging freedom/privacy, few legal digital options) seem less valid because there always seems to be 'that guy' standing next to you making faces and fart noises while you attempt to engage in rationale discourse.
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Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:5, Insightful)
I've long argued, especially when it comes to games and entertainment related media, there's absolutely NO justification in copyright infringement EVER
When you start dealing with works that are over 100 years old (which we will soon) my outrage scale falls off VERY quickly.
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Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:4, Insightful)
They may not have lost something, but he still isn't entitled to obtain the works of other's for free just because he wants it.
Exactly.
An artist puts on an exhibit and charges an entrance fee (so he can buy food/housing and then create new art). If I sneak in, the artist hasn't lost anything, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
A movie theater plays some new movie. They're going to play it whether I sneak in the back door or not; unless the theater is full, they're not losing money since I only take up one seat. But that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
(And so on and so forth, as applied to DVDs and streaming video, games and other software, music, pirated satellite/cable tv, hacked cable modems, etc.)
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Hilarious posts from those affected (Score:4, Interesting)
Hitler is going to be pissed (Score:5, Funny)
Hitler is going to be pissed!
PISSED! [youtube.com]
With every loss there is opportunity... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all let me say that the market for used xbox consoles just got extremely dangerous!
Microsoft needs to set up a system where you can check the status of an xbox console remotely so people can still sell consoles with confidence... 600K Xboxes are about to go up on ebay for a deal that is just too good to pass up.
Secondly if you assume that you do not mind playing games offline that you have pirated, you can still beat the system. Is that not what this is all about?
Step 1: Buy an xbox that has been live banned for very cheap off ebay. It has already been modded, so you dont have to pay for that.
Step 2: Download 50-60 dollar games for free and play them to your hearts content, offline.
After a few games you have already made your money back from the initial purchase of the console.
What if you want to play on xbox live? You have a live console that you do not hack and just enjoy online games there.
You still have to buy games that you want to play online, but there are a lot fewer online games that are worth playing than there are short and sweet single player games that you can just download for free.
Re:With every loss there is opportunity... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would microsoft want to assist people selling/buying used consoles???
They'd prefer people bought new ones, obviously.
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Re:Does anyone else want an open source console? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then don't buy it.
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