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Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals
Cutriss writes "This newspost over at National Console Supply Exchange seems to leave all the potential Xbox controller-importers in the dust. Apparently the US Xbox will only allow peripherals with a specific USB ID to connect to the console, thus locking out the use of Japanese controllers, which will have different USB IDs."
Update this doesn't mean all peripherals
will be region encoded. Apparently Joypads will
work on both sides of the pond.
Playstation made it so you couldn't play japanese playstation games.
I don't see the big deal, here. If Japan wants to sell controlers, they'll make them with the appropriate "US" USB settings.
Or people will make an adapter, like the modchip.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
* Addendum at 02:28PM EST *
A lot of e-mails have poured in from other sources and developers these past few hours. A call from an Microsoft employee also came in. The Japanese X-Box joypad should work with USA consoles. We'll confirm this tonight once our suppliers test the joypad with some USA games we shipped them earlier this week. If all is well, then our shipments of Japanese X-Box joypads won't go to waste after all.
Microsoft will be installing QuarterSlots(TM) into their controllers, to make sure that the players have actually bought the controllers and USB keys legally.
"It isn't fair!" claimed Joey, who says that "Mom wont even give me fifty cents for a game on the X-Box", even after he bought it with his "christmas money".
Microsoft will be handing out the controllers free, but will be requiring that they be brought back into the stores to empty out the quarters that have been filled inside. A microsoft spokesperson commented: "Hell, 50 bucks of change a day gets heavy, you know. You wouldn't want to hold that in your hand, would you? See, we're just making it easier on the consumer!"
If all it is is a certain USB ID, wouldn't you just need some kind of USB male-female cord and a small convertor that changes the ID as it goes through?
$10 says that the import shops are already working on this.
The only good use I would see for this feature is locking out unauthorized perhipherals, especially some that might damage the machine.
But the more paranoid of us probably think it's another monopoly move from the Beast. Which it may well be.
but is there a SANE reason for not allowing the use of these imported controllers?
Other than "A Machine We Control Totally", that is.
Is there some kind of incredible controller for the Xbox that is only available in Japan (as the original response controllers for the PSX were)? So that Microsoft doesn't want people to have them because of some other kind of interesting occurance? And how long until someone either finds a way to change the USB ID in the controller firmware, or an enterprising company decides to make their own US-based USB ID controllers that match a local controller that isn't USian? Fairly soon, I would guess.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
But I'm not very keen into it. I wonder if this kind of thing will slip over into the PC world? I somehow doubt it since most hardware companies are interested in selling to the max number of customers (think motherboard mfrs like Asus).
Locked hardware is almost criminal. Unfortunately we're all boned.
I know you may want one, but the only way to get companies to stop doing this kind of thing is to vote with your wallet. Otherwise, where is their insentive?
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The XBOX is a game *console*. It's perfectly reasonable to maintain a closed standard. What MS is trying to do is make sure they get their licensing fees from "official" peripheral manufacturers, instead of having their profits dried up by cheap Taiwanese knockoffs.
When another company does things to try and protect their market share, it's reasonable. When Microsoft does it, it's inherently evil. Remember, Microsoft does *NOT* have a monopoly on the console market, and has to claw it's way into contention.
I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means (MacOS, MacOS X, and Linux all run my household servers/desktops), but I do own an XBox.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
gg Microsoft
well, I might get flamebaited for this, but here we go....
If Linux did the same sort of thing to MS, people would laud Linux for taking a stand against MS.
Well, MS is taking a stand against foreign competition in their controller market. Big deal, other than the oh so conspicuous fact that it's MS doing it.
No matter what your take on MS, remember, they are a business, and it MAKES BUSINESS sense for them to do this.
One good thing from all this, I believe this will drive the prices down for individual controllers for the X-box, which is a good thing.
Sent from your iPad.
But the USB ID of a device is spat out by (usually) a little chip on the device. Couldn't controller manufacturers build two of the chips onto the board along with a switch to change between them? Why is this such a big deal?
This tagline is umop apisdn.
First hand account. Japanese controller works with US Xbox.
Is there even a purpose to doing this? The people who would normally be buying import stuff will just buy a $5 converter to use the peripherals they lock out, and the people who don't import controllers won't have a problem, since it doesn't affect them.
Chock this one up to 'annoying the community'.
No, I think this was just a "bug fix" and will become the standard in "Microsoft X-Box for Workgroups," due out next year.
-J Steele-
QTools allows you to modify the ID of USB devices. This has been used for a while to get non-3Com USB ethernet devices to work with the 3Com Audreys that 3Com created and dropped last year. http://www.klsi.com/drivers/index.htm - look for qttoolsinstall.exe
So you're telling me that the new japanese PleasureVibe erotic force-feedback controller I got off Ebay won't work when I get shot on Halo? God damn that Microsoft...
--
The controller is just a hunk of plastic, with a few microswitches(?) in it. I'd bet that Microsoft is making a profit on every controller they sell, even with the huge amount of raw materials they have to dump into a controller of that size.
Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is making a profit on controller sales, this is an underhanded thing to do. I'm hoping this is some sort of mistake, and that the update to the site is correct. I would like nothing better than to see the XBox fail miserably, but I'd hate to see consumers (even the ones silly enough to buy an XBox) hurt in the process.
If this is true, then we'll start seeing controllers with a user-selectable USB ID. Or just some software patch that will disable or work around the checks. On the PSX you can get an unlicensed yet professionally pressed disc that allows you to boot import games and copies without a modchip. Some asian pseudo-piracy company will simply produce a dvd-based XBox mod that will do whatever the users are willing to pay for.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Um, since USB ciructs are easy to program for, has anyone thought about using a USB hub on a linux box to gather packets from the "illegal" controller ,spoof the ID, and send the packets on to the XBOX and vice versa?
Just my two cents... ^_^
Aside from staggering releases why would you want to do this? It only makes preservation of the content more difficult. Doesn't region encoding things fly in the face of the entire "global economy" concept? I never have understood why movie and software companies go out of their way to make an international market difficult, impossible, or possibly even illegal. Any insight?
Amazing. I remember when they told us the CPUID number would not be a big deal. But others coutered it would.
Now they have done it with USB. This looks like arbitrary restriction, and I can't see why it should be allowed. We really need a strong tech department within the US government to monitor the anti-competitive use of technological advancements.
Of course, lets be sure that department is not the take too...
I'm usually a pretty conservative guy, but hearing some of the things that these companies are doing to take away the rights of consumers is really starting to piss me off.
good.
Now use your energy to write letters, paper letter, to your reps,to the pres, to the president of corporation, etc.
Maybe even get other like minded people together.
if you are all ready doing any of this, good for you, keep up the good work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You will have to pass a political orthodoxy test to get past the boot screen.
Q: What is the role of the US DOJ?
A: A) To promote and smooth the growth of large multinationals; B) To ensure the destruction of subversive whacko religious groups; C)To cuddle up in the Executive's lap and purr contentedly; D) All of the above.
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Of course, doing this would mean they would have to write drivers for this weird device, which they were probably too lazy to do...
BTW, if you are a big company and you want to prevent competitors from manufacturing peripherals for your product, is there any law that would allow you do to so?
Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals
True, maybe the Japanese controllers will work with the MS consoles, but we need to look beyond the immediate future here.
Hmm, let's think here...
Well, at any rate, it sure makes me nervous. Think about when they start selling region-locked Ethernet, or region locked hard drives, etc. add-ons for the Xbox. Region locking in general is a way for large companies to restrain trade contrary to international agreements. It was never a problem before recently because either (a) nobody thought of it (doubtful) or (b) the technological means to do it weren't around until recently.
DVD's have recently proven (in some people's minds, anyway) that "consumers" (if we're all consumers, who the hell is producing, btw?) will put up with this region locking restraint of trade nonsense. And it's a well known fact that the courts are so far behind in their understanding of technology that they won't figure out what's going on until nobody even remembers the way things used to be. I mean, "Microsoft" and "restraint of trade" -- who would have ever thought of those two words in the same sentence? :-) IOW, this doesn't surprise me in the least.
At least I know which gaming console I won't be buying anytime soon, though! :-)
---Have you crashed Windows XP with a simple printf recently? Try it!
Look, nobody could argue that MS has monopoly power in the gaming console market. Therefore, antotrust law doesn't even enter into it.
Chances are Microsoft is trying to eliminate the market of generic controlers inside the US. That way you will only get what Micrsoft officially allows because to be able to otherwise would require proprietary knowledge (the USB ID).
I doubt even Microsoft could force somethign like this on the PC because they don't control the entire distribution of PCs.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
This is perfectly fine if you think about cheap knockoffs that don't give Microsoft Licensing fees. But I think about my PSX with Dance Dance Revolution. Obscure peripherals like dance pads, light guns (nowadays), etc. Might be produced in Japan and not in the US, meaning XBox owners won't be able to play some games with the peripherals they desire. If this happens however, I guarantee a mod-chip inside of a couple months. And a perfect mod chip inside of 6.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The controller is just a hunk of plastic, with a few microswitches(?)
I think Immersion might argue differently
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I guess so.
I'd like a ticket off this rock now please.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
> Update: this doesn't mean all peripherals will be
> region encoded. Apparently Joypads will work on
> both sides of the pond.
I'm sorry, I thought "the pond" generally was understood to mean the Atlantic, as in, "Tea at 5? Sure, I'll just jump in my Concorde and jump 'cross the pond." So do you mean joypads (or are "Joypads" and "joypads" different pond-jumping beasts?) can be imported to the US from the UK and the rest of the EU but not Japan? Horribly confusing.
And yes, for your crazy peeps down under, the subject meant to say "Isn't the pond on our left?"
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Horsefeathers. This is exactly like region encoding on software, which is done all the time so the licensor can carve the world up into closed markets more easily.
It sucks for the consumer but there isn't anything illegal about it.
After all, it's no longer "Universal", is it? Perhaps it could be called RSB, for "Regional Serial Bus", or perhaps NSB for "National Serial Bus".
Seriously, I can only see one or two reasons why someone would want to implement this region locking:
First, I doubt a domestic company would want to take tech support calls for foreign-made equipment. And, yes, you know some clueless fool will call MS up, waste their time, bitching about why his Far East ContollerPad isn't working. Worse, perhaps they aren't tested to similar standards and could pose a threat to the Xbox. Who knows?
Second, and this is the more insidious one, they might do this because of internal competition, the same reason DVD region locking is used. Regional branches of the same company making the same product may have wildly divergent pricing and release schedules. Since Asia usually gets the cool toys first, the North American division wants to protect its turf by preventing imports of the Asian goods until they can get around to marketing the product domestically. While that makes good business sense, it's typically used to hide a serious case of "head up the ass" when the domestic vendor is slow to put out new products.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sony is evil too
sulli
RTFJ.
So, what are the chances I can hook my controller into a USB port and read the USB ID that it declares.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Did anyone think that the whole reason why people are buying alternate Xbox controllers is because they are so unwieldy and large that it could crush a small child under the sheer weight of it?
Its really a safety concern when you think about it...
That someone is trying to restrict an individual's safety by blocking overseas sales, well, then, I say, "Yo Ho HO! Avast ye mateys! Come and get me, Customs! ARRRRRGGGGHHH!"
I don't think this is about cheap knockoffs at all. It is about control. If Japan can produce something that isn't offered here, why not allow it? It isn't the same as DVDs. Region encoding is so that people in one country cannot view DVDs before they are released in that country, but eventually they will be released. The companies want to CONTROL the release of them. For game consoles it is different, they want to CONTROL what you use, not because they are going to offer the same thing at a higher price, they simply are not going to offer it. That is what makes no sense. They want to make sure that you aren't able to get a better product than what you are offering, so you have no choice but to buy theirs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Really. Big deal. It'd take me a couple of days to have a functioning USB vendor ID "filter/remapper" device functioning with a PIC and a USB chip. Total cost in parts, about $20.
Open source it, open source the hardware, put it on the web for Taiwanese mfr's to make freely at their own will and bundle with any cheap XBox peripherals they choose.
This sort of region locking is just stupid.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
1.) It prevents people from making backups of works which they purchased for the purpose of preserving their investment. You really should have the right install/run your software from a backup copy and and keep your master copy locked away in your firesafe.
2.) Their should be encouragement to preserve these works (some of them, anyway) for the future, especially since we haven't established the life span of these new media.
On top of this, increases in copyright duration, can remove the incentive to preserve a work for long enough to enter the public domain (so more stuff gets lost forever).
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
It's not circumventing any encryption. Your filtered power supply or UPS is a circumvention device for circumventing faults in your house's/office's power supply. Not all circumvention devices are bad, even in the evil eyes of the DMCA. Anyway, there's no copyright being infringed. At the worst, such a device might allow people to infringe MS's patent on the design of the controller by making cheaper ones that look like it and don't require the same USB ID - but people don't want to do that - they just want to use Japanese X-Box pads which is perfectly legal.
Follow me
If you remove the ability to region lock, then many companies will probably cease to sell their products in the poorer countries. The end result is that importation would probably slow down as well, since new laws would have to be created to stop the flood of low-cost knockoffs from outside the U.S. (note: I say U.S. because we are the biggest damn consumer as well as producer/marketer in the world). Patent laws would still prevent those products from being made in the poor countries (like they respect patent laws anyway) and so the availability will drop.
... bad.
This is pretty bad news for world trade and may lead to less trade between countries in the long run. Some are going to see this as a good thing (the anti-globalism people), but it can eventually lead to a lot of bad things as well, including increased tariffs and lower profits all around.
The third-world countries won't be affected too much by all this (they ignore the patent laws anyway and have a burgeoning black market in knockoffs), but the first-world countries are gonna suck it up
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
...then switch over to protectionism.
Seems that nowadays this is the only method of keeping competitors out of reach.
In the good ole times there were the innovators and inventors on the helm. Now all we can see is shivering apparatchiks. Sigh. I thought we went over this already with DVD regions.
Use The Source, Luke!
I'm just wondering what would happen if you took a Japanese DVD playback dongle & plugged it into a US Xbox (or vice versa) - would it playback US DVDs, Japanese DVDs, or not work at all?
I'm particularly concerned about regions as I'm a Canadian resident & Xbox owner who's planning to move back to Australia sometime (and I'd kinda like to keep my Xbox)...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
ok, at least when they region encoded DVDs there was some semblance of a reason. what reason is there for this other than to squeeze nickles? And how many people import controllers anyway? is the market the gargantuan to warrant this? have corporations (not just MS) all collectively shoved their heads up their asses? jesus. anyone else in favor of rising up and just revolting against the corporations? screw revolting against the government lets jsut get rid of the corps and start again.
-
The Xbox has no hardware-based region locking (aside from DVD) AT ALL. Zippo. You can import games and plop them in without a mod chip or anything.
/. is ready to leap at anything realted to the possible "monopolistic" business practices of Microsoft, but this is absurd. Do a little research. This is becoming nothing more than an anti-M$ World Weekly News. =P
This is a SOFTWARE thing. Certain developers/publishers can, if they so choose, employ region locking strategies. This is an OPTION and completely up to the developer/publisher.
It's developers and publishers (especially publishers since the US and JP publishers are almost never the same entity) and lose money off of importing, NOT Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo. Microsoft doesn't give a crap about importing, but some developers may. THEY are the ones who have employed region lockouts in their software.
This is very similar to what Squaresoft did with games such as Dino Crisis and Final Fantasy VIII--which had built-in mod-chip detection and wouldn't let you play the game in a modded system. (Of course, people figured out a way to circumvent it with Gameshark/Pro Action Replay...but that's hardly the point)
I know
-Jayde
What's a sig?
One of the apparent cornerstones of the community that seems to frequent this forum is functionality. Part of the definition of functionality is the ability to make diverse platforms / technologies interface. Anything that interferes with the ability to interface components is "evil".
Sometimes the interference is poor system design. Sometimes it is proprietary technology. And sometimes the technology that interferes with functionality is a marketing strategy.
Enter Microsoft.
We all know Microsoft is a technology company. But it seems to escape a lot of people's realization that they are a technology company who excels at marketing. It is their marketing, and not their technology, that makes them a leader.
A key part of Microsoft's marketing strategy is forced incompatability in their products. And in this community, that makes them "evil".
To be sure - anybody who uses the same strategy will be viewed unfavorably. Even companies who base their products on Linux.
Of course, Microsoft has a very long history of consistantly "evil" behavior. There is a good reason this community distrusts them. And they have deserved that distrust and criticism.
Sure - businesses should make money. But here's a novel concept - make money by making a good product. Use marketing as a tool to make sure people get to hear about your product and its advantages. And sure, this may sound very quaint to the Microsoft appologist / fan. But then, the free market concept has been around for a long time.
IIRC, "both sides of the pond" refers to the US and Europe - specifically, jolly old England. This would be due to the fact that 'the pond' is the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific. I don't know whta context you'd use for the Pacific. I'd htink something along the lines of "on the other side of the world".
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The UID is proprietary information (similar to a password) and reverse engeneering it is against the law according to the DMCA.
Hold it. The letter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act specifically permits acts of circumvention that are part of legitimate reverse-engineering for interoperability. From 17 USC 1201(f)(2):
Judge Kaplan made an idiotic mistake in completely ignoring this paragraph.
Will I retire or break 10K?
GBA flash cards are considered illegal
How are GBA flash cards any more illegal than SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards?. If I load only free software onto a Visoly flash card for Game Boy Advance, whose copyright am I infringing? Yes, free software for GBA does exist, and copying the Nintendo boot logo is legal under Sega v. Accolade. (Read More...)
Will I retire or break 10K?
In any case, I don't think such a device would be allowing any access to copyrighted material, so the DMCA wouldn't apply.
<sarcasm>
Microsoft, with its effectively limitless legal defense fund, may be able to buy off a judge enough to convince him that the requirement to "Press Start" makes the controller an effective access control mechanism under the DMCA.
</sarcasm>
Will I retire or break 10K?
Or does your mailer auto-block anything to or from Microsoft? [Emphasis added]
you do some basic fact-checking of the info you post?
What does a mailer have to do with pages linked to?
Seems like it was proprietary interfaces that got IBM into anti-trust trouble way back when.
Takes out NT and 2000 nicely. So far I've been spared XP.
You make the best point. Corporate America (and it may apply to European countries, but I see most glaringly in the US) has a real love economic double standards. Another example: They *want* restrictions and high tarrifs on products they can't compete on. They *don't* want restrictions on the importation of labor, because it cuts their costs. I often wonder if maybe capitalism isn't a huge, very long running ponzi scheme that requires the continuous shifting of labor and materials costs to cheaper and cheaper countries in order to keep the payouts working and higher and higher prices paid in the "expensive" countries to offset the decreasing savings of production shifts. I just wonder if/when it will break.
why should it be considered so heinous for the consumers to take advantage of the disparity to engorge their DVD collection
Well, one could argue on the grounds that two wrongs do not make a right. If we're speaking strictly of DVD production, where are most of the DVD copies produced and what are the conditions?
I see a lot of the cheap knock-offs and bootlegs as an attempt by foreign merchants to cash in because of lax laws or enforcement. A large part of it can may also be attributed to a different view of property rights than we have here in the US.
I mean where else would there be a law that classed pliers as an illegal weapon because they could be used to cut fences? We're pretty aggressive about our property rights - I'm pretty sure it's still legal in my state to shoot trespassers as long as it's posted. This would probably horrify the people of most other countries.
I won't argue that corporations are any better than people. In theory, they're supposed to be the same for certain purposes. And yes, they can get depersonalized in the pursuit of a buck and forget that there are real people out there with real problems.
That still doesn't make it right to try and screw over a company. On the other hand, it's not right for a company to try and screw over the people.
But, from the standpoint of a corporation, the rules in foreign countries are already in place (ie., lower wages, lower cost of living). Why shouldn't they be allowed to play by those rules? If you don't like the rules, change them. For instance, what's to prevent a country from having two minimum wages - one for locally owned business, and one for foreign business? Or perhaps higher taxes for foreign business with the proceeds going to public works?
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
You seem to view this as a matter of oppression by corporation (or something similar). So let's look at a hypothetical example, so that I may clarify my point.
You own a company: HKTiger Widgets. HKTW manufactures and sells widgets in multiple markets, the USA and Indonesia. Now, Indonesia has lower wages, lower cost of living, etc., and everything is just generally cheaper. In order to sell your widgets in Indonesia, you have to set a price that the Indonesian market will bear, say $1.40USD equivalent. The US market will bear a much higher price, say $5.00 per widget.
Now, you need some way of keeping the $1.40 widgets from being imported to the US, because you'll be losing $3.60 profit on every HKTiger Widget shipped back into the US. Even if the production price is only 80 cents, that leaves you a margin of 60 cents at the minimum and $4.20 at the maximum.
Now, fine if you can continue to produce widgets at a margin of 60 cents, but it does not allow your company to grow as fast as at the $4.20 price. If your primary stockholders are in the US, then they are going to prefer a faster growth company (the $4.20 margin) over a slower growth company. So you devise a way to keep the $1.40 widgets out of the $5.00 market and thus attract stockholders.
Thus, region encoding is born. The Indonesian widgets (produced by your company) are keyed to work only in Indonesian machines, thus preventing the importation into a market that can bear the higher price. The US widgets are keyed to work in US machines because it's easier to create one standard and just change a number or two than to create a batch with and a batch without the region coding.
All of this is done because, as a whole, the US market can bear a higher price for your company's widget. It's not reasonable to expect a company to go to each and every consumer and ask what you can afford. So you set a price that the largest percentage of your target market can afford and hope it works. You may adjust up and down a little bit as the market changes, but overall the price will be higher in the US than Indonesia.
I understand this and that's why I don't argue with region encoding too much. The only time it really bugs me is when I hear about a good foreign movie and can't get it here because there's not a US-region encoded version.
These are the compromises for living in a capitalist society. Take it for what you will.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.