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XBox (Games)

10 Xbox 360 Dev Kits Stolen in Germany 28

Posted by Zonk from the early-adopters dept.
BlueStar writes "Ten Xbox 360 Development Kits have been stolen from a storehouse in Düren, Germany. They were being transported from HongKong for game developers in Europe together with other Microsoft products and wrapped in neutral packaging. 3 of the 10 XeDKs have been found after searches in Germany and Austria ... probably in the homes of the people that leaked out those (now deleted) Xbox 360 motherboard pictures not so long ago."
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10 Xbox 360 Dev Kits Stolen in Germany More

10 Xbox 360 Dev Kits Stolen in Germany

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  • You know, if the people who steal the kits HAVE ALREADY STOLEN KITS, you'd think they would be less...you know, DUMB. Still, this is good news for the HAXX0R crowd who gives us all our neat stuff like Linux on Xbox and the like. Oh, and first post.
    • This is why the Xbox community bothers the hell out of me. GBA/GCN/NDS homebrew developers take a great amount of pride in reverse engineering them from scratch and using free tools. Xbox developers think it's perfectly acceptable to use stolen/pirated dev kits.
      • The Xbox mod community is larger than the communities for any of those systems you mentioned. There are parts of the Xbox mod community that don't use the Microsoft dev kit in writing their apps. Just because there are some that do doesn't mean everyone in the community is "bad".
      • most people don't reverse engineer game consoles from scratch. 99% of the time they have inside info. They just don't announce it to try and cover themselves legally.

  • Hey! It's life! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Sunday October 09, 2005 @03:05PM (#13751626) Journal
    The tighter you grip, the more information you'll lose.

    Security through obscurity is stupid from the start; it ALWAYS gets b0rk3d into.

    • A) All security can be considered security through obscurity. Take SSH for an example. If you use a keypair, the only security you have is relying on the obscurity of your private key. The moment someone gets your private key by any means, they can connect as you. If you don't agree that this is security through obscurity, please provide a clear definition of what you mean by it.

      B) This was not security by obscurity - in fact, it wasn't even security in the usual sense. This was security by only giving the

    • Don't be so stupid. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hey! It's life!

      What are you on? A game studio in Germany now doesn't have development kits. If they had been working with early hardware in preparation for the arrival of the final dev. kits, their schedule has most likely been completely fucked. Which could mean very bad things for the sales of their game if they had planned on being a 360 launch title. If it's anything like Xbox 1, Xbox 360 dev kits are in *very* tight supply right now in the months before the launch. Replacing them is going to be almost

  • How would this help linux-on-Xbox? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @03:17PM (#13751694) Homepage
    I've already seen some comments with respect to how this could be a great leap forward in getting arbitrary code to run on the xbox. However, what you have to realize is that the Development Kits don't sign code, Microsoft signs code. All the development kits allow you to do is create code that will run on a special Xbox-like development platform. It's possible that the dev platform would help in figuring out the architecture of the system, but some kid from MIT would likely have that figured out two weeks after launch anyway. It also might also simplify the process of creating code for hacked Xboxes. But ultimately, the limitation isn't writing code on chipped consoles, the limitation has always been getting code to run on non-modified consoles. Having Xbox 360 development stations won't help that.

    There are tens of thousands of Xbox development kits floating throughout the world, many in the hands of people who would love to see Linux on Xbox. But it didn't help with that effort. And likely having a few loose cannon Xbox 360 development kits won't make a difference in getting arbitrary code on that system either.

    Microsoft signs the code. Unsigned code won't run. Either snag a code signing station (good luck!) or break the cryptography. Nothing less will suffice for a pure software solution.

  • with other Microsoft products and wrapped in neutral packaging

    Bill: I hate these filthy Neutrals, Steve. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

  • Here come the mod chips... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @03:42PM (#13751797)
    I'm sure that at least one of these will end up in the hands of a mod-chip manufacturer, and give them a nice head start on cracking the copy protection of the 360.

    • Re:Here come the mod chips... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I personally don't know if having a development kit 6 weeks before you can get an actual system will actually make a difference. Personally, I have never worked with or used a console development kit but I suspect that most of the hardware used in copy protection would probably be missing; after all why would you need copy protection in a development platform?

      The only real benefits I could see of examining a development platform would be that you could examine how the system works in the absence of copy pro
      • "...you could examine documentation on the hardware looking for a weakness (although why would anyone include any documentation on the copy protection?)."

        That's what I'm expecting. I'm pretty sure that some information about the copy protection will be in there, because it just seems like something developers might need to know about. Of course, I might be completely wrong...
  • Anyone got a torrent for that zip which is now removed?
  • The more you tighten your grip, Gates, the more XBox 360s will slip through your fingers.
  • The 3 that were recovered were in the hands of Xbox modchip maker SmartXX. They have some forum postings on their site about it. If you dig around some more all their pictures of the dev kits torn apart, accessories, etc. are on there still.

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