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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.
He's shown an interest in modded XBoxes...
:rolleyes: He brought this box along to a meeting with Bill Gates. Bill saw a demo of this, was quite impressed, and asked something along the lines of "How can we engage this community?" - instead of saying something like "How can we squash this?" It's long been on the back of everyone's minds in the Xbox group - how can we get students and hobbyists involved without disrupting the console business model? The good news is that it's still on the radar, we'll see what happens in the future.
from Ars
A little over a year ago, one of the people in my group modded an Xbox, installed Avalaunch, and put all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XBMC, RSS readers, etc, along with some "backup" games.