360 Hackers Claim Full Read/Write Ability

Technology Sweden writes "According to the site Xbox-Scene, a program is available to transfer saved-games and more from the memory card or hard drive. This opens up a whole new world for the 360. Soon we might be able to run our own home brewed games and show our favourite Xvid movies."

Comments

Good News for the Homebrews

[eldavojohn]

So there are already sites out there for Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2 and a multitude of other consoles/handhelds. This will make it a lot easier for homebrew execution to get started on the Xbox 360 for those who welcome it. It technically isn't legal since these developers don't have developer licenses but since they don't sell their homebrew apps, they usually aren't targeted.

What a lot of people are interested in will probably be the porting of older consoles through known emulators to the Xbox 360. I don't want an Xbox 360 but we'll see how well this development takes off. I long for an emulator that plays my old SNES games as it is kind of cumbersome to have many many systems to hook up. A fully functioning Link to the Past on Xbox 360 would make me buy it.

For those of you looking for free game ISOs to dump from the internet to your Xbox 360, this is not something that will allow this yet as from the article:

Note: Before people try to launch crazy ideas again: No this does not allow you to copy retail games (signed for XBOX360DVD media only) to the HD and play them. It's a tool that gives you access to the Xbox 360 HD and Memcard from a PC, it does not hack/bypass any security.

So there's no free games yet. On top of that, you can't shell out the boot sequence from a disc to use it for launching your own homemade application. Hopefully we'll see that in a few more months. I myself am not really interested in "free" games, just want to be able to use my Xbox as a real toy instead of the confines of those who can afford the insane developer's license fee.

Anyone else notice that this article reads like an advertisement for 360gamesaves? There's three links to it.

Re:Good News for the Homebrews

[AKAImBatman]

It technically isn't legal since these developers don't have developer licenses but since they don't sell their homebrew apps, they usually aren't targeted.

What's illegal about developing for the XBox 360? There's no law that says, "you must obtain a license to produce software for a game console."

There is a law that makes it illegal to circumvent protection mechanisms (DMCA), but the standard "reverse engineering for compatibility" loophole was left intact. (Albeit not as strong as it once was.) AFAIK, no one has challenged a console maker in court over reverse engineering for compatibility, making it a legal issue that's still up in the air.

And before anyone brings up Nintendo v. Atari (Tengen), allow me to remind you that Atari never finished reverse engineering the lockout chip. Instead they obtained the patent information under false pretenses, and then attempted to get away with reproducing Nintendo's IP.

Re:Good News for the Homebrews

[b1t r0t]

"I long for an emulator that plays my old SNES games as it is kind of cumbersome to have many many systems to hook up. A fully functioning Link to the Past on Xbox 360 would make me buy it."

Xbox and Dreamcast have fully ported emulators that run at speed with full sound. What's the problem?

So which emulator would that be for Dreamcast? DreamSNES hasn't been updated for over three years, and it does not run all games at full speed with full sound. Super Famicast is better at some things, but after a bit of googling around, apparently it doesn't hit the all games full speed mark either. It's more like 80-85% with both sound and full graphics emulation turned on. Overclocking the DC can help some, but not enough. Plus, DreamSNES has a problem with the sound that causes the "wind" sound in Chrono Trigger (such as on that bridge to the castle jail) to be played as a buzzing noise.

When I see a Dreamcast SNES emulator that will run Chrono Trigger at 100%, then I'll start believing. Until then, picture the "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster with a Dreamcast instead of a UFO.

RTFA

[MeanMF]

People need to RTFA before submitting... The article specifically says this does NOT get around any kind of security measures present in the 360, and that this doesn't bring them any closer to running homebrew content or bypassing the 360's copy protection and DRM measures.

Re:Pardon my ignorance but...

[sacherjj]

Do a search for mod chips. I use the X3. This allows me to put all my XBox games in a box and not have to wait for them to load. I select them from a menu and run them. To make storage for games, you will need to add a new hard drive. I wouldn't go back. Changing games? Just hold both triggers and select (I think) and you reboot back into the menu system and start another game.