Microsoft Banning Modded Xboxen

An anonymous reader writes "Since the release of Halo 2 (ed: and just before), Microsoft has been banning modified Xboxes from Xbox Live. Some have even been banned with their mod-chips turned off. Previously many users had been able to use Xbox Live provided they disabled their mod-chip. There are a few theories floating around as to how MS is doing this: from scanning the hard-drive for non-MS material to being able to check if the DVD-drive/Hard-disk serial number is from stock or not."

Comments

Re:Target: foot. Fire!

[Blakey Rat]

I'm sure that your single lost sale will, single-handedly, convince Microsoft that this policy is a mistake and that they will immediately retract the code and let XBox Live be a free-for-all with whatever hardware hacks you can muster.

Criminy. You're not as important as you think you are.

I like this because it prevents cheating. Period. I don't care about people modding their XBox to, say, play MP3s from a streaming server, but there's no way for Microsoft to tell the difference between that and somebody cheating. So they play it safe. It happens to reduce piracy at the same time. Good for them, and for me.