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Microsoft foils Xbox hackers with new Config
randomizer9 writes was among several readers who noted that Microsoft has changed the configs on the XBox and really messed up the hackers who have been trying to coax the box into being divx players, linux boxes, microwave ovens, white noise generators and so on. Kinda doubt the conspiracy angle, but it certainly is annoying.
You, of all the people, are giving Microsoft benefit of the doubt?! Not had your coffee yet, Taco?
Nonsense. If *course* they made changes to the system to foil hackers (described as 'security' chances).
Even the article says "Microsoft has tried several tactics to discourage such hacks."
Microsoft has a *LONG* history of doing this sort of thing, going back to the Dr-Dos days. And, for them, it is a legal and legitimate response to a threat on their business model.
An arms race will ensue..
Let's see... MS updates their bios and changes some of their chips. Now the boxes can't be hacked. The next thing you know someone will post a story about how the new boxes can be hacked which will be followed by the horror that the next updates will defeat those hacks. Oh the humanity.
M$ is probably going to do this everytime they start a new production run. The end result however will be that they are going to end up with a whole series of slightly incompatable versions of the xbox. This will be a support nightmare for developers and will in turn lead to yet another buggy unstable M$ product that we all know and loath.
Because god forbid that we actually run custom software on a piece of hardware we supposedly 'own'..
Hey MS...do you even remeber that your fortunes are directly linked to the fact that your software runs on the worlds most cutomizable and hackable(in the good sense) hardware platform...hell you console is just a hack of that hardware platform....
get with the program who cares if people hack the XBox...stop pissing and moaning....perhaps you have the next big thing on your hands if you just let people play with it alittle.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
It really *IS* a case of "It's not a bug-it's a security feature".
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
- adam
I really don't like the way the word "security" is being used to mean "preventing the owner of the system from using it as he sees fit."
In my mind security means only letting the owner use the system as he sees fit.
-Peter
What the "hackers" really need to do is make use of undocumented features in ways that every home user will want to use. Then Microsoft wouldn't dare remove them -- I remember this happening several times in the old days of the Palm Pilot (Remember all those *Hack programs?)
"changed the internal configuration " ??? What's next? A new improved graphics engine? A faster processor? More memory? It's turning into a PC!
I want my karma, and I want it now!
But, what if they threaten to sue modchip makers out of existence at the same time they make these BIOS "updates"? I bet after several changes nobody will be around to make the modchips...
I might have bought an XBox if I could use it as a general purpose entertainment device. Now I won't buy one at all. That's an odd way of moving units and increasing your market share.
I don't think it's that insightful, but people buy stuff if they like what they can do with it. Nobody that I'm aware of has a black market XBox manufacturing plant - every piece of hardware is purchased through Microsoft. Nobody that I'm aware of without an XBox is buying XBox games. If I can't get my hypothetical XBox hacked, I'm not buying one, and I'm sure as hell not buying an XBox game or dozen.
How long until we see this headline "Hackers foil Microsoft's "new Config" with new Modchip"?
Or the new production run uses a smaller die and thus consumes less power and runs cooler.
-sirket
Did you even stop to think for one second that maybe they went with a larger, passive cooling solution?
"Disabled the fan", my ass.. the article says they removed it. So they must have found a way to passively cool the chip sufficiently, or maybe they have a more efficient rev of the chip..but there's no way they would slow the chip down, as that could cause compatibility problems with the existing games, which were coded for a box that offers uniform performance across the board.
Could the X-Box be a prototype for Palladium/DRM-secure hardware?
... enough of conspiracy theories for one day...
They release a product that they consider secure(the v1.0 X-Box), let the public pry away at it for a while, knowing the hacking consoles(especially with one as tasty as the X-Box) is an already established industry.
Then, once it is hacked to a reasonable level, they revise the hardware to be more secure...
Shake well, repeat...
Basically, MS gets a free hacking team to test (fanatically) their security systems... The only negative point is that some of the hackers release how they did it to the public.
All of the knowledge/experience that they gain from this security cycle will go directly into their security model for DRM "secure" PC hardware...
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
O'Donnell declined to specify the specific changes but said they include measures intended to boost security. "They (Microsoft's Xbox hardware team) know the hacker stuff that's out there, and they're always trying to increase security," she said.
Secure from whom? Secure from consumers. Secure from people doing what they want with the hardware they buy. This trend will get worse.
Please stop buying this product, Slashdotters. Please discourage others from buying it. If people stop buying it, then Microsoft will stop holding the good games hostage and competition will stay alive in the console market. Microsoft will get out of your living room. We don't need a mandated corporate bully in our HOMES for god's sake.
The games simply can't be so good that you're willing to trade all future choice in gaming and home entertainment for a few plays today.
The thread the article mentions can be found here for those that are interested. There's links to pictures of the new Xbox motherboard too. Sounds like all that's needed is a few tweaks to the hacked BIOS image and everyone will be back in business. My bet is that any new protection will be defeated before the new units even appear in stores in North America. Sometimes I wonder why Microsoft even bothers.
Giving away stuff for free is anti-American. Employing contractors in the latest country to misplace its labour laws (whoops! now where'd they go?) is as American as apple pie.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yes, but one day they'll make a mod chip with a nail so big it will destroy them all!
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
where there's a damn about to burst, and it keeps springing leaks. All they do is stick their fingers in the leaks... eventually, they run out of fingers, and start using toes. Then the toes run out.
Eventually Microsoft will run out of digits (as in the fingers & toes). If you want to keep a system secure, you can't be reactionary. You can't wait for a leak to spring up, and then stick a finger in it.
And that's part of the whole problem with the MS culture - it's not a problem until it's exploited. Then you fix it. This is the best reason I can give you as to why not to use MS products. 'Cause they don't give a fuck until something's seriously broken. And then, it's too damn late.
-- james
Hey MS...do you even remeber that your fortunes are directly linked to the fact that your software runs on the worlds most cutomizable and hackable(in the good sense) hardware platform...hell you console is just a hack of that hardware platform...
Not quite. Keep in mind that the Xbox is sold at a loss, with gains realized on the sales of games and accessories. Every Xbox sold for hacking around would not generate the income to cover the cost of the console itself. In this case, its understandable that they would do this to discourage further losses.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Well, it does these days, anyway. At current prices, and with chips getting cheaper, MS is probably making back the cost of the hardware on this run- but that doesn't cover R&D and marketing.
They make *that* back (and then some) selling licenses to developers, who go out and sell a lot of games. Sony ate piracy to get mindshare away from Sega and Nintendo; MS really just wants your buck in the end, and maybe a li'l street cred for "innovation."
So... Pirated games = less license revenue rolling into the console designer. The console designer spends millions on locking-down the console to prevent pirated games, which leads to higher R&D costs to recoup, which leads to a greater need to avoid piracy...
It's the Netpliance business model. Unfortunately, Netpliance had a niche- it was the perfect product for my grandmother- whereas Nintendo, Sony, and until recently Sega, still do a better job at providing 'fun' than MS. In fact, if MS hadn't "stolen" NVidia, there's little doubt that some 'real' console maker would've forged an alliance.
I find it depressing that GNU/Linux hackers are paying Microsoft money to get XBoxen and port the OS to it. Now Microsoft has rendered their efforts futile. Guess what - their efforts were futile to begin with. Why not develop a good substitute for MS Exchange so corporate customers have a good reason to switch? Why not do ANYTHING rather than focus on a project that has no useful outcome, all the while pumping money into Microsoft with each XBox purchase? It would be equally useful to write Microsoft a check for the cost of an XBox and spend some time watching TV instead.
Yes. Are you new here?
I feel bad for the game developers and companies...
it's bad enuff having to test the shit out of a console game to make sure there is NO way it can ever crash/freeze/break... but now you have to support different BIOS', hardware revs for chips potentially and who knows what else.
What happens when a loose QA procedure somewhere allows a game to slip out that runs fine on the "old" xboxs but crashes on the "new" xbox?
And what's this about no fan on the nvidia chip? they probably did a study and found that it takes exactly 15 months for chip to burn out with decreased cooling, which puts them 3 months outside warrantee. Either that or they're pulling that speedstep-wannabe clocking bullshit where it clocks down when it gets hot, which I'm sure will be great for gameplay on a console system where the hardware is normally supposed to be static!
Actually I don't agree with you. What MS is worried about is that people will buy XBox and then never buy anything else for it (from MS). XBox looks like a sweet deal because it is - it's sold cheaper than it can be made. The rub is that they make up the money on the games (after all how much does a game ACTUALLY cost to make?). This isn't a new idea (what MS didn't "innovate" this idea - well imagine that) it's called "Razer Blade" marketing.
If I were buying an XBox I'd put Linux on it and use it for something, (webserver, MP3 Jukebox, simple wp/email, whatever) I might even buy more than 1 - it's cheaper than buying something else. But then I'm not buying any games so MS is just making a loss. Microsoft is afraid of people like me (in present company I'm tempted to say people like us). And there is a lot of people like me, who don't want an XBox console, but are quite happy to pay less for a webserver or whatever.
Before all the MS weenies call me a hacker, or criminal and want to burn down my house - I'm not thinking about anything illegal, I'm just considering buying a product and tinkering with it for MY OWN USE. There's nothing wrong in that.
Of course I also understand MS want to stop me!
Xbox is probably containing the exact same technology as Palladium and this is testing ground for the PC version. Thus its of vital importance for MS to show that its unhackable to keep support from music/movie industry on palladium.
If it shows that Palladium is just another dongle and fail as DRM its going to dissapear.
HTTP/1.1 400
The whole point of a console like the X-Box is that they have complete control over what they can do with it. Why on earth should they care if or if not someone uses the box to run something else on?
Face it guys, the reason the changed something was because they wanted to, and they don't give a shit about caring for the X-Box hackers compatibility. And, might I add, they shouldn't do so. If you want a PC, buy a PC - an X-Box is not a general purpose machine.
I can't stand MS anymore than most others here, but this story is absolute bullshit. Fight them where the battle is at, not just everywhere.
Sony has done this forever... the PSX had several iterations designed to break the modchips.
They are trying to stop modchips... not Linux installs.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is such a stupid friggen argument. If I really want to play xbox box games I am going to buy and use an xbox (and games), if I want to buy an xbox to hack around with I am going to buy the xbox and hack with it. If I cant hack my xbox ***I WONT BUY ONE***, nobody buys an xbox to play the platform games and then decides 'hey I dont want to play these games anymore because I can hack it'.
>> ...MS does not want anyone but MS makeing (sic) changes to the Xbox. Sounds like more closed source to me.
Does that surprise you? Why would you think the Xbox is anything but a closed source, proprietary platform? MS can do whatever they want with it. If you don't like the changes, you can complain, but MS cares about the game revenue the box generates (which is why it exists in the first place).
By the way, I don't see this as a conspiracy. Where're the other conspirators?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Protecting their X-boxen from mods is one thing, but hasn't Microsoft spent enough $ on this?
When your product is in a bit of a financial trouble, common sense would dictate that it's not a great idea to throw away even more money on it when it hasn't shown too much evidence of a potential profit.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Maybe Microsoft is just playing with the hackers. How else would microsoft generate interest with the penguin-heads? If they pretend that they get really offended when someone hacks their little black box, more anti-Microsoft hackers will buy one to get in on it. What other company can convince people that they are getting screwing when people purchase their product?
The first web page with detailed instructions on "How to hack the XBox MkII" has just been by M. Joe Schmoe, of Peoria, Ill.
Film at 11.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
If memory serves, Sony made iterative changes to the PS1 over the course of its run, which negated mod chips that worked in earlier 'generations'. I believe the same is true with the PS2, but someone can confirm or deny that for me. Anyway, hey it's within their rights as the developers of the hardware to discourage what they perceive is hacking. It's also within our rights as consumers to be able to work around anything they do. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
There are two presumptions here:
1: That the changes really are only on the hardware backend, and don't really affect games currently marketed and in development. Sometimes hardware/software interactions can be quite subtle, and don't act the way you expected.
2: That some customers don't choose and buy a game box precisely *because* it can be 'chipped. At the moment, I don't own a DVD player. But whenever I do choose to get one, it *will* be one that can be and has been readily 'chipped.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
As for your conspiracy theory, there is a thing called passive cooling. There is another fan in the box, and if there is enough airflow through the case, it should be fine.
"What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?" - Weird Al Yankovic
you're implying that because they sell crippled hardware that they should be able to control what you do with it thereafter. If I buy a CD player, am I only able to buy one label or band or independent record store or so on's music? absolutely not! Hacking an xbox to run Linux is nothing more than a legitimate modification to what is essentially a computer, and as it is owned by you, your property to modify as you see fit. This is no different from me dropping a Cobra engine in my Crown Victoria because I choose to do so.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Maybe what MS should do is release at-a-profit box that is already hacked to be a pseudo PC that can play XBox games? Install whatever OS you'd want on it, etc., and MS still recupes a small profit.
Sure, they'd not get money on the games, but then again, those who want an XBox solely for the games will probably want the cheaper XBox anyways.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
What does M$ gain by "out-modding the modders"?
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
After reading this topic, I have to confess to feeling a little uncomfortable. Most likely it's because of the sudden urge to defend Microsoft here when all rational thought say not to, but here goes anyway.
1. As far as the changes go, all systems evolve and change as time goes on. Video game systems are no exception. When I was deciding on what videogame systems to get last year, I decided to get Gamecube and PS2. PS2 was established already and wasn't a real decision on how to go about purchasing it. I would go to the local video game store and make the purchase. Easy.
The Gamecube though was different. I didn't know how availability would be in the US and the big consideration was "hey, maybe I should import". Was it because I'd be able to get the games earlier? Yes and no. It factored in, but the real reason was that console hackers will all tell you one thing: get the system's first release. The original PS2 in Japan had region lockouts easily disabled. I believe that the early Saturns were the easy to Mod ones.
This isn't really shocking. Console modding is 50% staying one step ahead of the console maker.
2. Doesn't Microsoft have a generally good track record hardware-wise? Say what you will about the XBox, but it's certainly a pretty system when played (huge and strangely designed, but pretty). I've generally enjoyed a reasonable amount of reliability from Microsoft mice and joysticks. I don't know how it's been for anyone else.
Sorry. Just needed to get that out.
"If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates." -Willy Wonka
Console hardware selling below cost is a myth. Almost all consoles sell at a profit. Every console ever sold has turned at least a slight profit, with a few exceptions:
To get a jumpstart, Nintendo apparently accepted a *small* loss on early Gamecubes. They very quickly fixed this problem though, through reduction of manufacturing costs. They did NOT want to sell below cost if at all possible, and it is NOT standard company policy. (Nintendo quickly fixed things to make a tidy profit on GCs, even after price drops.)
The only exception is Xbox - The Xbox is the ONLY console that was pretty much designed with the assumption that it would be sold below cost. It started below cost, still sells below cost, and according to most analysis, will never sell at anything below cost because the Xbox design is inherently not as conducive to cost reduction as the Gamecube/PS2/etc. (For example, Sony eventually took 2-3 chips from the PS2 and merged them into one, significantly reducing manufacturing costs.) Because almost all Xbox parts are sourced from third parties, MS doesn't have nearly as much flexibility in this regard.
The only thing MS has going for it in this case is the fact that their initial development costs were probably much less than for the GC or PS2. People seem to leave this out of the analysis.
Nonetheless, any Xbox that is sold and not used with licensed games is a losing proposition for MS. For Sony and Nintendo, it isn't, although it's not nearly as desirable as having the boxes used for cash-cow game sales.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
and Microsoft needs to sell games to make up for the lost money on the console.
It's not illegal for you to customize your XBox, but that doesn't mean that MS should make it easy. I don't like the fact that Microsoft refers to this as "increasing the security of the XBox," but I can see why they use that term over "decreasing the usability."
However, the XBox is no longer really that good a deal as a generic X86 box. You can get hardware from Walmart.com for $200, and they even pre-install Linux on the machine.
There isn't really a reason to buy an XBox, unless of course you absolutely have to play Halo.
I'm just waiting for the time when they make one of these changes and it makes it impossible to play your legally obtained, native XBox games completely inoperable.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
folks here are forgetting the console video game business model - THEY LOSE MONEY ON THE HARDWARE. this has been true since the original NES, and is likely to continue to be the case in the future. this is why the games are $50 - they make money from the game license, like the old razor and razor blade model. more boxes sold with unlicensed divx players and linux means money lost by M$, not made.
Unfortunately that wouldn't work well I would think....the cummunity would always fell the 200+ dollar probable price difference was a ripoff...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
So making a product more secure/solid is alienating hackers?
Taco mightn't be Slashdot's greatest Troll, but he certainly is the loudest.
I am a Karma Library.
The X-Box should have been called the Y-Box, as in..
"Why, Microsoft?"
"Why should I want one?"
pfft..... how much luck have Sony had sueing those manufacturers out of existence? not much
China and some other Asian countries have become the "land of the free" when it comes to mods and other legally questionable devices. Several changes to hardware just means it's better for business as they get charge higher prices for each new version released.
- HeXa
I'm sure microsoft should start listening to you for their financial future.
Microsoft didn't wake up one day and say, "hey we should make a hackable system and sell it for less than cost!" That way NEBWBIE and the other 0.05% of the market will buy it! Just think of the $250,000 we can lose!
If you want a hackable system, go buy a computer. I'm sure you've heard of it. Ohhh, you can't find one under cost? I wonder why they're not giving them out for free! Just think of all the money someone could make doing that!
Go make a system. Buy a microATX board, and make a small hackable system. Lots of fun.
And last but not least, there is nothing stopping you from hacking your old xbox. There's nothing to keep you from trying to hack a new xbox.
Companies have been dipping their chips in epoxy for decades.
that is a great point. They are afraid that modding will cost them money in the long run, in responce they spend large sums of money on development of a more secure system, costing them even more money.
Any hardware or software can be hacked given a little time. It's easy to keep a system secure when you control access to it, when was the last time you heard about someone hacking an ATM, you don't, because it's hardware that is very hard to get your hands on, the moment a system like an xbox hits the market people will try to hack it.
one would think that it would be in their best interest to release a given peice of hardware and let people do what they want with it so long as they don't figgure out how to make their own hardware (directly cutting into sales of hardware).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
With everything that they know now, the X-Box hackers won't take long to figure out a way to do this. It's always been this way with all consoles. Someone always finds a way.
Microsoft may have a lot of money, but they aren't going to keep modifying their manufacturing facilities unless it means saving money on production. I doubt that they are going to churn out a drastically different X-Box every month in order to thwart hacks...
What is the functional difference between the two statements?
I think your way sounds better, but I don't see any difference in meaning.
-Peter
Just because M$ has a shitty buisness model for the X-BOx does not make me theif for hacking it..
Question: what the heck is an I-Opener? :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
actually, I don't think they did piss and moan at all.
Someone else found out about it the hard way...and it wasn't because games quit working on it either.
(In Walmart)
Walmart-Guy: May I help you?
Me: I'd like to buy a toaster.
Walmart-Guy: Sure, we've got the X-Toaster right here for $50!
Me: A toaster for $50? What's so great about this toaster? The slots for the bread are razor thin.
Walmart-Guy: Well, you'll notice that you can get expansion slots for different sizes of X-Bread.
Me: What if I want to use my own bread?
Walmart-Guy: You can't use your own bread.... but it does a really great job of toasting with the latest thermal technology.
Me: Okay, I'll try it.
(At home...)
Me: After trying that crappy, hi-calorie, low-output, nausea-inducing XBread, I want to put my own bread in the toaster. All I need to do is fiddle with it...
I should just be able to make the slots bigger myself. Great Zok! I couldn't wedge the bread in here if I wanted to... and the thermal coil unit has no cooling device... and what's this DRM scanner doing in here? That explains why my regular bread wouldn't toast - if it can't find the digestable GUID-strip in the bread, it won't even toast!
Two weeks later the toaster explodes from a heating malfunction. Several "reboots" by using the toaster knob to toast the bread satisfactorily failed to address the problem with the toaster itself.
Moral of the story: Go back to Walmart, get a $199 Linux box and use it for Linux. Do not buy MS Bread or MS Toaster because it means they can make more MS Crap with it.
This space for rent.
I can see why you think the billion dollar company has a shitty business model.
They should really hire you for your insight before they go bankrupt tomorrow. Just think of the income they could have made by making their XBOX play free games for everyone.
My dad was just complaining the other day that he couldn't hack his XBOX into a cheap DVD player.
There was very little uproar over the price and licensing of the Yaroze when Sony brought this out, to be able to program and test out software that would eventually be submitted to Sony by independent publishers.
So why would selling a higher priced modified XBox be any different?
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I want to add something to the effect that we'd rather look at 50 pairs of store bought boobs and only choose between 1 pair of corporate owned boobs. I just need to word it right...
Murphy was an optimist.
The PS2 and XBox aren't that tightly integrated and have a bigger parts count. (Nintendo makes money on game console hardware while Sony and Microsoft don't. That's why.) But in the next generation, we should expect to see machines that are basically one big chip inside. This will be the end of modchips.
Yes, it's possible to open up an IC and modify it. The ATI/Nvidia article shows the millions of dollars of equipment needed. But even that doesn't help much. Now that everybody uses boot-time public/private key authentication, even opening up the chip won't get you the private key you'd need to make content that will load on an unmodified box. So far, no one has been able to get an unapproved program to load on an unmodified XBox.
There won't be backdoors. Read the license agreement for DVD decoder manufacturers.
I'm sure they're having fun fucking with us, why don't we have some fun too? It's just a game, not a big evil conspiracy, sheesh. I remember back in highschool trying to crack savegame formats for games like M&MIII. It's loads of fun to try and beat the protections.
The problem is that $200 hardware from WalMart is exactly that -- $200. It's probably (now this is just a guess) full of cut rate components. Where as from numerous postings of its components across the net, we know that the X-box contains some pretty decent hardware. Also, it's being sold below cost (or at least it -was-), so the worth of the components is actually > $200.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
You don't seem to have grasped the point you were replying to. Yes, they can change the specs as they wish, yes, we understand that they market the box to sell games... none of that is responsive in the least to the post you were supposedly replying to, however. The point he made is that none of this has anything to do with security - the term is being misused.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Uh, that's because the I-Opener sucked and no one signed up for service. They weren't in the buisness to make $200 consoles and sell them to Linux hackers for $99 you know. YOU KNOW?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
It's my damn X-box. I payed money for it. It resides next to my TV. So why would they care if I put a mod chip in there to make it do something? Why can't I hack it and play with it. I paid my 200 + dollars for it. If they could make it where it works after spilling 2 + beers in it. Then I would be impressed. The point is that I spent my money to OWN this piece of crap, I'm going to mod the crap out of it if I want to. They can't stop me. They shouldn't even try.
Step 1. Write code. Step 2. ??? Step 3. Profit!
Wouldn't that be "security only means letting the owner use the system as he sees fit?"
So I guess my way is ambiguous . . . but I already said I like AC's way better!
-Peter
They're buying from multiple suppliers.
Hence, there is a limit as to how far they can integrate.
NV makes the bridge/GPU/sound portion, and I believe the (currently unprofitable) Xbox already has all the NV-provided functions integrated into one chip. (If not, there is some integration here)
Intel makes the CPU. Not likely that you'll see this integrated with the NV chips.
MS isn't stupid. They're not going to stick with expensive manufacturing if they can avoid it. Problem is, because they don't control ALL of the hardware in the system, they CAN'T avoid expensive manufacturing techniques. Sony was able to integrate the Playstation (and later the PS2) because they not only produced the boards and units, *they produced the chips*. Nintendo doesn't quite have this flexibility, but every single part of the Gamecube was custom-designed for them.
MS is using an off-the-shelf Intel CPU. Chances are Intel isn't going to integrate their CPU with an NV chipset just to help MS save some money on their console. Intel simply has no real reason to justify such development costs since the Xbox is a tiny market for them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The rub is that they make up the money on the games (after all how much does a game ACTUALLY cost to make?)
This comment is terribly uninformed.
The short answer: it costs millions of dollars to make a game.
The physical medium (the DVD and package) may only cost a few dollars to reproduce, but the data on that disc costs millions to develop.
Question: what the heck is an I-Opener? :)
User #575267:
Ah, young cricket, you missed a good hack 2.5 years ago.
Here you go.
Hey moron I said for the X-box not as a whole. As a whole they have an awesome buisness model, but their market penetration for x-box has been far below their initial expectations and the boom of vendors dying to sell gmeas on the platform has not become the reality they told people it would be...
Actually I used to work in the games industry (okay that was quite sometime ago) so, yeah I know how much it costs.
But you're forgetting that once you've written it, it's done almost all of your costs are done then. Pressing the DVDs, making the boxes doesn't cost much at all. The market is huge. BUT there is something you're forgetting - Microsost CHARGE all the other developers to get their game onto the XBox. This doesn't cost Microsoft a dime, and they make money on ever one sold.
Honestly this is how the console business works - that's why consoles are cheap. This isn't just how Microsoft's XBox works it's the same for Nintendo and Sony.
As a whole they have an awesome buisness model,...
Since when is a monopoly an awesome business model?
Listen, I know Grade School can be tough, but hang in there, and someday you'll be a mighty 7th grader.
Who has made more money you or them??
Who has had more sex, you or a rapist?
MS should be able to do anything that doesn't violate (antitrust) law.
Life is too short to proofread.
They took the cooling fan off the "Custom GPU"? Even with that fan going the machine could heat my house. Are they trying to ensure that it breaks in 6 months so you'll buy the "Homestation" or what not?
Shift happens. Fire it up.
I beleive that the primary reason that the hardware was altered is because the Engineers at Microsoft were able to re-design the system to make it cheaper to manufacture. Sure, the added effect of locking out current Mod techniques is an added bonus. But Microsoft would not make those changes just to add cost to their manufacturing costs.
Think about it. No console maker can get away with increasing the cost of the console to "Lock Out Hackers". The end user is either a hacker himself, or does not care.
The primary purpose is to most likely make the console cheaper, which means either a lower retail price, or more profit for Microsoft.
END COMMUNICATION
Uh, that's because the I-Opener sucked and no one signed up for service.
I bought mine to hack, but stupid me tried their service anyways. Chat never materialized, streaming audio broke itsself, and they "updated" the ROM for me. Let them eat debt I say.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
If you think this is outrageous, just wait till slashdot realizes that we have 4 borgs on the frontpage on the same day, ready to assimilate us any second now... ;)
"Wireless : LAN
That said, the original Playstation went through three or four hardware revisions, plus the PSone, and each time some little hack or add-on fell over. So what? Just create a new one. Hardware otaku the world over always know exactly what revision of what hardware they need for their favourite hack to function. Look at the Celeron overclocking scene.
I was thinking about this and I realized there's one more thing to think about:
Cheating!!
I've played counterstrike online and the whole game was spoiled when we realized that someone had a mod that let him zip around at supersonic speeds and take people out.
It could be like punkbuster.
Why doesn't anybody think of it this way?
when you mean the Department of War.
Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?
Finding out that I can only buy gas at connocco before vs. after the sale has ZERO bearing on wether or not it is a security feature.
I know it is hard to keep your simple mind from wandering when reading a 30+ word post.
The analogy isn't faulty. No situation is 100% analogous to any other, and if you totally miss the fucking point any analogy is likely to fall apart.
-Peter
First, I'm the original poster.
Now, you say "no where in my post did I even mention security, as that wasn't the point" but you were replying to my post about the use of the word security.
To repeat myself (which I REALLY hate having to do, and really affects my opinion of your reading comprehension skills and/or intelligence) ANY analogy is "faulty" if applied in an overly general way. So, as you admit, my analogy holds just fine on the topic for which I created it.
You go on to say "but I was defending WHY ms's decision to do this is a completely legitimate and legal practice." I defy you to show how this is relevant in any way to the thread.
This brings us to the fundamental point, which is that it would be nice if you would try to figure out what "reply" means and what a "thread" is. (Here's a hint, if you keep changing the subject line you are fucking up the thread.)
-Peter