Microsoft Disconnects Modded Xbox Users 738
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.'"
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.
No Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Another loser from the entitlement generation (Score:1, Insightful)
I think it's more funny how people like him think they are entitled to get any number of movies, music, games, etc for free without paying as if they are owed them. Yet, I bet if you asked these same people if it was perfectly okay for their boss to no longer pay them a salary for their work because the boss didn't feel like it, they'd be all up in a tizzy.
Re:No Cheating (Score:1, Insightful)
But 5 years from now, when the publisher decides you should have upgraded to the latest incarnation of a game, the multi-player servers for the console will be gone. With PC games, I can play Quake or Quake II or Unreal today because of the community-run servers.
I would rather have the occasional cheater than no online community for the particular game in a few years.
Giving the game publisher the ability to kill online play is a BAD bad idea.
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*
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...
Why (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:360 (Score:3, Insightful)
And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
Not really. All it does is keep the bad cheaters off the games. The good cheaters don't get caught by these sweeps.
And that's just what xbox live needs, darwinism at work refining a better crowd of cheaters.
The checks done by live are less sophisticated than say, punkbuster on the PCs. And all that accomplished was to raise the stakes and make the cheaters go into business selling the "undetectable" cheats and taunting those like Activision.
Re:'Cause modding hardware you own should be illeg (Score:2, Insightful)
'Cause modding hardware you own should be illegal!
No, but violating the terms of use you agreed to buy using their service means they are perfectly justified in banning you from that service when you break the rules.
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.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
I really cannot see how they are Microsoft's best customers. How does it improve Microsoft's or game publishers revenue when exactly these people almost never buy games. Considering theres no homebrew scene in Xbox360, the sole reason people get their consoles modded is to play copies.
I doubt that this effort will even result in an increase in revenues that will be enough to pay for the enforcement. There must be better ways to improve profitability.
It is not only that for Microsoft. They also have to care for their game developers, who are obviously going to bitch if theres rampant piracy going on and MS isn't doing anything for it. When there's the constant fear that your console could get banned from online play at any time, people begin to think if its just wiser to get the games they like and not bother with it. Unlike PC's, consoles are just supposed to work, and complicating things takes that aspect off. Yeah it wont stop piracy completely, but it will lower it.
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.
Sauce for the Goose (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
All of that is useless because you agreed to their terms of service when signing up for Live, which also contain terms about just exactly this. You wouldn't get far in court.
Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I see a lot of people complaining about DRM and draconian copyright enforcement, which I sympathize with. But it's pretty rare that you'll see someone out-and-out defending piracy here.
Unless it's, you know, cool pirates. Yarr.
Or I dunno, maybe my filter is turned up too high. Maybe I'm just too high. Whatevs.
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.
Re:Child labor laws (Score:5, Insightful)
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".)
And how likely is that, exactly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't "Dude! this Xbox has a mod-chip so you can play copied games!" be the main selling point of such a console?
Re:360 (Score:3, Insightful)
Your logic is...staggering. Apparently so as to avoid breeding a "better crowd of cheaters" MS should just lower the bar to such a low level that any old suck can cheat, thereby preventing people from getting really good at it.
I think you should suggest this giant leap of understanding on behalf of mankind to prison administrators. If they keep making it harder and harder to escape from prison, it'll only breed, by "darwinism", a better grade of prison escapees.
Kudos, sir. Kudos.
Re:No Cheating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe I'm saying this (Score:3, Insightful)
When just, so be it. What happens when it is unjust? Is it still simply their right?
Yeup, it is! And if they get out of hand with it, they're idiots.
They do not have a monopoly in this space, and aren't likely to soon, so market forces can work here. Their stance on this stuff makes some people chose PS3, or makes some people who'd otherwise enthusiastically get an XB360 remain content with the lesser processing power on a Wii or PS2, or makes some people stick to PC gaming instead of console gaming. And this is all fine. Microsoft gets to experiment to find the right balance point, and gets to make horrible mistakes in doing so, and gets to be marginalized if they're too stupid about it (cf. "Zune", "Windows Mobile"). As long as they're not in a position of sufficient monopoly power, as they are in some other markets, it's fine.
Re:Another loser from the entitlement generation (Score:0, 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.
Ahhh, good consumer.
You are right: the person paying has no say over how much money he needs to hand over. It's either all of it or get the fuck out.
Now, get the fuck off slashdot and get back down the mall. My bonus is looking like it might not be a record breaker, so get spending!
-signed, your bank.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
It's clear this guy isn't interested in going to court, if he's admitting that his recourse would be to commit fraud against a retailer who sells MS products just to get back at MS.
I don't know why he thinks cheating a dealer out of $X of retail product is going to hurt MS in any way at all ... either the dealer is going to eat the loss or his insurance will cover it and his rates will go up. Or maybe he thinks the dealer he buys stuff from is responsible for MS Live's decisions and should eat the cost on their behalf...
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.
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.
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
Re:360 (Score:3, Insightful)
well that's one way of twisting the issue around, kudos to you too!
Microsoft should ban cheaters, not people with modified clients. Banning modified clients will cause BOTH cheaters and people who do not even want to cheat to defeat the new measures against them. But you're conveniently forgetting about the second group.
Wait, does that mean you're OK with non-cheaters becoming better modders ? My mind boggles...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:360 (Score:1, Insightful)
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)
Well, maybe he'll think twice before he does it again.
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.)
Re:Fun with numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet money he plays just a few games. Now do your math. It's close to a wash at 75 pounds.
Except that 75 Pounds didnt go towards legally purchasign a game. It went to the person who mod'ed the X-Box. So it's not a wash for MS.
Re:360 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:360 (Score:4, Insightful)
You really think this kind of thing has an impact towards cheating? I suspect it has a bigger impact on MS's bottom line, as these are people who are paying a monthly fee to play online. Way to go MS, demonstrating part of the RIAA strategy: let's prevent our customers from being able to spend money on us! Way to go!
What this probably kicked off was people who had modchips to play overseas games, and absolutely 0 of the "cheaters".
Oh, and welcome to console DRM at it's finest. You bought into it, now when they kick you out you're pissed that everything they sold you was on a "license" basis and you technically own 0 of it. enjoy!
Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
So now you expect MS to identify and categorize any mod you might happen to have made, to tell whether you specifically are cheating?
OTOH, MS is defining the boundaries of a service they're providing; so even if cheating could never be an issue and their only purpose were to not extend the service to people who circumvent their DRM, I'd still figure them to be within their rights.
Re:And of course... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:"a small percentage" (Score:1, Insightful)
3% is a pretty small percentage.
until that 3% is standing in the street in front of your house with baseball bats. o_O Then tell me that 3% is insignificant.
If we're throwing a wild hypothetical situation like that, then can we also assume the other 97% is standing between the 3% and you, also armed with baseball bats? Or do we only assume one side counts in this matter? (well, yeah, this IS Slashdot and all...)
I mean, in your situation, I suppose you could make an argument that the 97% not affected by this wouldn't care and would just go on cheerfully playing games online on their not-banned XBoxen, and that the 3% are more predisposed to criminal activity such as property damage and murder. I don't have the slightest clue what point you'd be able to make with that in relation to the current discussion, but that's the best I can make out of your argument. Would you care to enlighten us as to why the 3% is what matters?
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:4, Insightful)
I have several friends with modded consoles and hand held systems. The only chatter they generally spread is encouragement to mod your own system so you too can download ripped games.
There was nothing "random" or "arbitrary" about banning a select group of members from online services due to the detection (in one fashion or another) of non-standard hardware.
The argument that it stifles innovation or profit is rather flat when taken at face value. For some systems it might make sense, but there are outlets already in place for people that want to develop for the XBox 360. There is a thriving independent developer community out there. Streaming media? There are plenty of ways to get that rolling as well, legitimately.
You just can't rip games is all.
Maybe I've just missed it. Can anyone point to a real life example of something worth modding your system for that doesn't involve torrented games, tv shows, music, movies, etc.
And before someone sidesteps the discussion, no, putting in a larger hard drive doesn't count in the context of this discussion.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
The following is hardly evidence, but merely an anecdote that may be typical of some Xbox users: I have an original xbox. I don't do much online play, but I do own a significant number of games (more than 10), and have played most of them through. After I noticed my Xbox starting to become irrelevant, I picked up a [legitimate] copy of Mech Warrior and soft modded it purely to install Xbox Media Center (now XBMC). Currently, XBMC is the only application that I use with the Xbox. I have never played a pirated Xbox game (on my system or otherwise), and I have never cheated on an Xbox game (on my system or otherwise). I certainly did not mod my Xbox in order to do either of those activities, and I do not plan to ever do those activities in the future. If I did play online and were banned, it would be unjust, unwarranted, and fiscally irresponsible from Microsoft's standpoint in that they would lose out on my monthly revenue. In fact, the main reason that I have refused to use Xbox Live is because of Microsoft's inane policies with regard to modding.
Re:No Cheating (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No Cheating (Score:1, Insightful)
The most effective counter to cheating is an empowered, caring player base. That can take many forms. If it's a few blokes sitting in front of a console playing locally, the players can punch the cheater, or at least change their controller frequency at random with a toe or a yardstick. Same story with LAN parties; cheat much, and you're probably not getting invited back. Online, that means strong player communities and scheduled/private matchmaking -- i.e. not playing pick-up-games.
My grand heyday in gaming came back with Unreal Tournament 2004, and while there were *cough* some number of cheats for the game, I didn't see them much because I played primarily in clan matches of various sorts, ladder matches, LAN parties (gotta love getting the best players on a college campus under one roof and on the same team), IRC-organized matches with players I either knew or who had someone known vouching for them, and yes, one cash tournament. Your reputation was pretty critical, because it was your ticket out of the crappy pub games. Cheat, or get flagged by one of the anti-cheat scripts (which, hey, were player-run and could report UIDs/IPs back to the administrator for subsequent wall-of-shaming), and you had some serious explaining to do before you could get back into circulation.
I guess it's not entirely fair or reasonable to say, "get really good and find where the other really good players hang out," but that's where my best, most cheat-free experiences with people I wasn't directly acquainted with have appeared. Playing with people you know also obviously works. Other than that, there are just too many openings for people to be jackwads. Even in online chess, there's no way to tell whether you're playing a real human or someone relaying moves from a chess program.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bit different though. People went from downloading illegally to downloading legally because downloading is more convenient than going to the music store and buying a CD, then ripping it to your computer, and the legal download sites allow previews of the songs before you buy. I think modding hardware, downloading DVD ISOs, and then burning the DVDs is less convenient than buying the game, and in some cases, full games can just be downloaded on PSN or XBox Live these days.
There is also no way to rent most music, so it's basically either buy or don't buy. Most games have demos you can download, and if not, most games can be rented for a few dollars a night.
I think the person who downloads an MP3 out of convenience, and someone who goes out of their way to get something for free are two entirely different people. The latter can't really make an argument for convenience or one for "try before you buy."
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:4, Insightful)
And that right there is why MS is evil.
You shouldn't have to pay them to put code on your own box.
Now, mind you, I *would* be ok with them only allowing signed games to get onto XBL. They could very easily do that without outright refusing to run the games at all though.
Unfortunately, telling a pirated game apart from a homebrew game is not easy, and it's clearly in in MS's business interest to treat them both the same.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
All of that is useless because you agreed to their terms of service when signing up for Live, which also contain terms about just exactly this. You might get far in court.
While a TOS is more valid than an EULA he may be able to win in court depending on the circumstances.
Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that is by FAR the biggest reason they are. You really think otherwise? Homebrew software, emulation, media center... that stuff is being done, but software piracy is the main use.
Don't get me wrong; I think it should be completely legal to modify your hardware.
Re:Why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, it's a fucking typo and Slashdot has no Edit option. Of course it's supposed to be "device", congratulations, you win. My typo is no excuse for the morons on this board who have no reading comprehension skills, but feel compelled to "correct" me anyway.
So my measured and intelligence response to you is, "go fuck a goat." Thank you.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not even cheaters since there's no modding titles - no one has cracked the signed code on the discs, so its purely to stop "backups". I'll give people the benefit of the doubt, and it would be slightly more convenient to not load the disc in the machine even when its already on the harddrive through the "load to disc" feature. But if anyone seriously thinks these folks aren't ripping games, you gotta be kidding yourself.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:2, Insightful)
Those music studies only prove that 10% of those that download music, spend more than all the people that don't download.
Re:Funny First Hand Account (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree. Some people feel they're entitled to everything for free. It's not just games, though - software like Photoshop, Premier or Maya get pirated a lot.
What's really sad is, most successful people never paid for their copies until they actually needed them for a legit business. College students will pirate that stuff to learn the software and be able to put it on a resume, ultimately making money off it - but according to most of them, it's totally moral only paying for software once the first(or tenth) paycheck comes in.
I admit I'm a pirate scumbag, but I don't pirate software or games. I do try games, which classifies me as a pirate scumbag, but I don't have a single piece of unlicensed software on any of my computers. Try it(regardless of whether it's shareware), make a decision, then buy it or turf it.
Most pirates are just in denial - They're getting training with software that should cost them thousands, putting them ahead of non-pirates. I don't know how you can get rid of that incorrect feeling of entitlement. I know it bleeds through to everything they consider purchasing.
I myself have tried to keep my sense of entitlement in check. For example, I paid $37 for FRAPS, and thought it was a good deal. I paid $10 for Mass Effect (DRM laden, eeeeww!), and that was the most I was willing to pay. I paid $20 for Torchlight, and $30 for King's Bounty, and both were good deals. I'm not entitled to stuff for free, even if I demand the right to try software that lacks a refund policy.
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a novel idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quit trolling. Pay attention...you can profit h (Score:3, Insightful)
With the abundance of the red ring of death syndrome it's rather sketchy to buy a used xbox 360 already.
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who modded their xbox (not my 360 which remains unmodded). No one with a modded xbox buys game, they download them. The notation that its for backup is silly. There are 2 people out of every 10,000 that use it for backup. I'm not against it being done, I'm all for people being able to back up their games since its a pain in the ass to get replacement disks in most cases,
Its just silly to pretend that the majority of modders buy games, they don't. I know plenty of people who specifically did not want their XBox modded because they would just download games for free.
Re:No Cheating (Score:3, Insightful)
Deconstruct.
Assholes.
If you don't have the guts to write a naughty word correctly, don't use it at all. Swear or swear not, there is no try.
"I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" -commercial.
Because the point of "proper" grammar and pronounciation is to make text easy to read and understand. If it can be read with a single glance, and the meaning is unambigious, it is well enough written.
Why on Earth should other people spend the time and effort to ensure that their textual output meets your standards? If you are obsessive-compulsive enough to ignore anything that contains grammatical errors - which includes your own post, see above - remain ignorant, and preferably silent, rather than posting offtopic melodramatic garbage about "butchering the language".
Revenue Boost (Score:3, Insightful)
When a company wants to increase its revenue they will initiate a ban. The pay method of the individual is never banned. The company will no longer have to provided the service that the end user payed up front for. It is then predictable that a high percentage of users that were banned will immediately repurchase it.
600,000 Gold accounts are worth how much?
Arbitray:
600,000 x $27.50 USD (3 months) = $16,500,000.00
AVG user is on day 10 of 90 day prepaid Gold Service
Ban-Hammer is dropped
M$ just made 14,850,000 pure profit by not having to honor remaining service
Follow week after the Ban-Hammer 50% of users repurchase Gold accounts $8,250,000.00 of new cash surge
If M$ or any company for that matter wanted to curtail cheaters and modders, they would ban your Credit Card (pay method).
Re:No Cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Creative and engaged users, not cheaters (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst part of this tho..
Games used to allow local lan play, most don't anymore... It basically killed the idea of a LAN party. You have to connect to live, just to play a game with someone sat next to you.
blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
Long hail Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
palapala (Score:2, Insightful)