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.'"

Comments

well, duh!

[macdaddy357]

Did some baboon actually call them for technical support after soldering in a mod chip and watching it go boom?

Meaningless

[Sean0michael]

I don't know about other /.ers, but I've never had to call tech support for a game console, nor have I ever needed to use the warranty. As far as I can tell, voiding your warranty is only a nominal loss, nothing more. Most people who are thinking about modding their XBox won't care about the warranty--they know full well they are voiding it. They probably have the connections to fix whatever they break. I guarantee MS doesn't.

so wrong

[foQ]

Let's look at the things which Microsoft claims are "significantly and positively impact[ed]" by trying to protect their Intellectual Property:

economic growth
The only economic growth impacted is the upward growth of the modchip makers -- an industry Microsoft can't dominate and bully. What happenned to the economic growh of Netscape when Microsoft integrated IE into Windows -- a design flaw that has not been corrected even in Vista! How about all of the patents illegally used by Microsoft over the years? Why was their "economic growh" and Intellectual Property not worth protecting?

technological innovation
The modchip industry is pretty damn innovative! You have a huge multi-billion dollar company in a huge multi-billion dollar industry designing these consoles to be hackproof, yet a few guys in a garage can hack them in under a year. That is technological innovation, too, it's just not in a way that Microsoft can stifle and control. It is open innovation, published and available to all.

and most importantly, the confidence of customers who count on the integrity and quality of their products.
Integrity like scratching discs to unpreadability? Quality like overheating and frequent crashes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the modders and makers who designed ways to cool the power supplies and devices? From strings to hang the power brick to watercooling for the processors, the hardware hackers have been improving on the designs of the XBOX 360. It seems to me like these problems should have been fixed BEFORE shipping by highly paid designers, not AFTER shipping by fans who didn't want to feel cheated out of their money.

Re:so wrong

[Osty]

The modchip industry is pretty damn innovative! You have a huge multi-billion dollar company in a huge multi-billion dollar industry designing these consoles to be hackproof, yet a few guys in a garage can hack them in under a year. That is technological innovation, too, it's just not in a way that Microsoft can stifle and control. It is open innovation, published and available to all.

This is the classic dilemma of anybody doing anything security-related. If you're defending, you havet o protect the entire system against any possible hole, usually with limited man power (yes, even in the OSS world), and under a time constraint to get the software/hardware out (you may patch it later, but you need "good enough" from the start). If you're attacking, you just need one tiny little hole, and you have all the time in the world to do it. And, you're working with essentially infinite man power (while you're focusing on one hole, another attacker somewhere else is focusing on a different one). Innovation here lies in how long you can keep your system unhackable.

Integrity like scratching discs to unpreadability?

It's your own damned fault if you don't understand the physics of a spinning disk and try to reorient your Xbox 360 while a disk is playing. Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have made the Ring of Light adjust with the orientation of the console, as that would keep the sheeple from screwing up their games because they want to see the pretty lights. Not a design flaw (go try it with a PS2 -- you'll have the same problem. Nobody was ever stupid enough to do it with a PS2 because there is no Ring of Light on the front).

Quality like overheating and frequent crashes?

I can't help but think the overheating issues were way overstated by early adopters and the media. By all accounts, my own 360 is "launch window" (build date of early December, purchased mid-December), and I've yet to run into an overheating issues. Then again, I don't box my 360 up in an enclosed media center, with no airflow around the console or the power supply. You wouldn't put a PC in an enclosure with poor circulation, so why would you do that with an Xbox? There was a verified problem with a bad batch of power supplies, but you could get that replaced under warranty (but not if you modded!). Not to mention the many cases where crashes were attributed to overheating when the real culprit was a poorly-connected power supply (you have to push it in until it clicks and the little clip catches. Otherwise, you're not going to have a solid power connection and could easily crash the box because of it).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the modders and makers who designed ways to cool the power supplies and devices?

You're both right and wrong. Modders did design ways to cool the 360, though none of them were particularly innovative (if you can't cool it better than Microsoft did in the same form factor, it's not an innovation). However, those modifications are unnecessary with a little common sense, and potentially a power supply swap.

You want to talk about innovation? Okay. Go build a comparably-powered PC in the same form factor or smaller. I bet you can't do it. No, Mini-ITX.com doesn't count, because those PCs are nowhere near as powerful as a 360 (they make great media centers, though!). Even Sony can't do it. The PS3 is going to be huge. The 360 is no larger than a PS2. Don't believe me? I'll take a picture. I have my PS2 standing right next to my 360, and the 360 is approximately .5 inch taller due to the hard drive, and no wider. It's a little deeper by about 1.5 inches, but that's less than the old Xbox and much less than my cable box or my DVD player.

Only voided warranties...?

[JediLow]

"will not be eligible for technical support, and the user's warranty will be voided."

Does that mean Microsoft is actually respecting the owner's right to own the console unlike they did with the Xbox? I'm fine with companies saying that its no longer covered by them if you tinker with it, but when they attempt to go beyond that line (ie: claiming DCMA violations, claiming the owner has no right to do what they want with their console) its gone way too far.

Re:Only voided warranties...?

[Osty]

Does that mean Microsoft is actually respecting the owner's right to own the console unlike they did with the Xbox? I'm fine with companies saying that its no longer covered by them if you tinker with it, but when they attempt to go beyond that line (ie: claiming DCMA violations, claiming the owner has no right to do what they want with their console) its gone way too far.

Can you point to even one case where Microsoft prosecuted an individual for modding his Xbox? Sure, they and Sony went after Lik-Sang for selling mod chips, but not the people who use them. They've attacked sellers who sold modified Xboxes with 100s of pirated games, but that was because of the pirated games, not the modchip. They patched holes in games and the dashboard that allowed for soft-modding, but that's their perogative and your fault for buying a re-release of a game or signing in to Xbox Live (and if it was IE or Windows, you'd be bitching if they didn't patch the holes ...). They banned modified Xboxes from Xbox Live, but they have the right to choose who uses their service and who doesn't (and once you're banned, you no longer have to pay for it). Read the TOS you agreed to when signing up. Microsoft has never stopped anybody from installing a mod chip and running Linux.

Expect all of the same to happen now, too. In fact, I'm surprised that their only response was to remind you that you void your warranty with this hack. The current hack is only useful for playing pirated games. You can't use it for homebrew software or to run Linux, so there's no legitimate justification to shield it. When (not if) a real hack or mod chip appears, expect to get banned from Xbox Live for using a modified console (which will be much worse this time around, since Live is so much more important to the core experience of Xbox 360). Expect Microsoft to continue to go after people selling consoles with pirated games. And expect them to stay out of your business if all you want to do is run Linux and stay the hell off of Live.