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Microsoft Responds To 360 Hackers
Microsoft would like to remind you that hacking your console most definitely voids your warranty. From the Eurogamer article: "Modified consoles, Microsoft added, 'will not be eligible for technical support, and the user's warranty will be voided ... the protection of intellectual property rights is a high priority for Microsoft and our partners, one that significantly and positively impacts economic growth, technological innovation, and most importantly, the confidence of customers who count on the integrity and quality of their products.'"
Its not exactly technical support, but I DID actually call them for support on my Xbox360 in an effort to recover the copy of HexicHD that I deleted (as many others have) in an effort to reclaim some space on the HDD (expecting the game to take up the 7 gigs of space that was missing from the 20GB drive).
.... THAT WAS 5 WEEKS AGO!!!
After giving them my GamerTag, Email Addresses, Phone Numbers and Xbox360 Serial number they gave me a reference number for the call and I am to "expect a return call from them within the next week with the prepaid code" that I need to enter to enable to download from xbox live
How can they claim they wont give you support if you void your warranty? it's no different than what they provide at the moment with a valid warranty.
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
The hack only allows piracy. As Microsoft said, the rest of the security system isn't broken at all.
That's the sad part. It's very obvious that Microsoft cares much more about preventing Linux, Xbox Media Center and Game Shark much much much much more than they care about preventing piracy.
The 360's security against unauthorized software undoubtedly cost millions of dollars to develop, and an unknown amount to manufacture. Meanwhile, the anti-piracy system of the 360 is almost identical to the Xbox's weak system. They barely changed anything, even though they knew it was already broken.
By the way, the piracy hack for 360 was finished months ago. They probably spent the rest of that time designing their stuff to make it incredibly hard for Microsoft to detect it through Xbox Live.
Expect Microsoft to very soon reflash the drive of anyone connecting to the Internet with a version with no back doors and that checks digital signatures of future flashes. And they'll do this instantly upon detecting a connected network cable without asking for your permission.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Either you can't read, or you can't do math. :) When you go to delete anything from the hard drive, you can see exactly how much space it takes (in KB or MB, depending on the item). Even if you saw that Hexic is ~30MB and didn't realize that it was accurate, you're never going to get 20GB out of that hard drive. First off, 20GB == 18.6GiB (silly hard drive marketing using the SI definition of GB, while Microsoft displays "GiB" as "GB" on the dashboard). From that, subtract another 4GiB for game buffers (same deal as in the original Xbox, though they never told you the exact size there. Everything was in "blocks"), some amount of space for Xbox emulation, filesystem overhead, and the dashboard, OS, and related resources, and it makes perfect sense that you only get ~13-14GiB of usable space on a 20GB/18.6GiB drive.
Oh, yeah, if you haven't heard back from support, call them again. They're people, too, and it's not unheard of for people to forget things once in a while. You just may be unlucky.
By definition, no. However, assuming a normal (Gaussian) distribution of intelligences, that's a reasonable approximately.
http://outcampaign.org/
Protecting the integrity of the online security. On Xbox live you can be certain the person whacking you constantly isn't doing it with the aid of a patch to increase speed or damage, you just suck.
If that goes, Xbox live's one REALLY good reason to exist does too.
In Scandinawia for example, there is a (by law) 2 years of indemnifications from defects in materials or craftmanships on all items marketed to consumers. And even 5 years on items meant to last significantly longer than 2 years.
Now, this doesn't cover normal wear and tear. Nor does it cover consumer misuse (like say dropping the console from 6 feet), but neither does Microsofts "warranty".
If you do mod your console, this affects your rigths under law not at all. The only exception being, offcourse, if you break the console by doing the mod. That is, offcourse, not Microsofts fault.
But if you say mod your console by soldering in a new BIOS, and then half a year later the DVD-drive breaks, MS will have to replace it at their cost, unless they can show that it's likely the DVD-drive broke because of the soldering-in of the new BIOS.
Americans buy expensive "extended warranties" to get what people in other countries have by default. (not that it stops companies from trying to push "extended warranties" here too, it's just even more pointless here.
I think you're probably right about most of that, but the 360 is substantially bigger and heavier than a PS2, and also requires an external power supply the size of a brick.
Not that the 360 isn't an impressive piece of engineering, but it's much more comparable in size and mass to the original XBox.
You can use Xbox Live at no cost for much of it's functionality (with the 360). You'll get game updates, be able to download content from marketplace (free and paid), and be able to view and get on the leaderboards for various games. Claiming you need to pay for such things is completely and totally incorrect.
It's only a limited subset of features that require paying - and really, $50 is a bargain for what you get. Cheater free online play (try THAT on a PC), a voice communication system integrated in, etc. Really - if you can afford a high-speed internet connection, Xbox 360, and games, then the cost of Xbox Live is negligable.
(Note, yes, there are a few games that have had issues with cheating, but that's been due to flaws in the game itself - not Xbox Live)
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Actually, I got a 360 on launch day, and was able to redeem my warranty last month when the whole thing up and died (3 red lights). It took about a week and a half, and they replaced my original console with a newer one. My guess is that the launch day 360's were a little more problematic than later versions, leading Microsoft to extend the original warranty.
The call center was pretty noisy though.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...