MS Employees Debate Mod Chips

Via 1up, a post on Xbox strategy group member Andre Vrignaud's blog discusses the view of mod chips from inside Microsoft. Not surprisingly, he concludes that they're a barrier to a viable business model. Just the same, the post has some good consideration of the issue from both sides. Especially interesting is his comment that "a friend of mine at Microsoft once demonstrated a modded PSP to Bill Gates and showed off all of the interesting things that enabled. According to my friend Bill was intrigued and asked the audience what we might be able to do to encourage this sort of thing without damaging the business." Even if it's a sticky wicket, at least they're thinking along the right lines.

Comments

buisness model?

[MyDixieWrecked]

The only things microsoft could possibly be considering that would be beneficial to their business model are

• selling devkits
• shared source of anything end-user created
• charging extra to allow homebrew
• locking out non m$ signed homebrew projects (so there's no opensource, free devkit)

I mean, is it possible for m$ to not think with their wallet? wasn't tech ever just plain fun to them?