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MS Employees Debate Mod Chips

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quite-a-ruckus dept.

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.

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by everphilski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He's shown an interest in modded XBoxes...

    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. :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.

  2. How to solve the problem of mod chips. by kinglink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make it so the user can't find a reason to use a mod chip except piracy. Sounds like what it is now?

    Except I can't play Japanese or European games with out a mod chip for the most part.

    I can't play out of region DVDs.

    I can't play any form of a backup of games I legally owned but was destroyed one way or another (I recently lost over 200 PSX and PS2 games because of a moving compnay, they can't find the boxes. Am I supposed to go rebuy Suikoden 1 and 2, Xenogears, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, and Disgaea all from scalpers on Ebay? )

    I can't install an OS on the hard drive if I wish to.

    I can't install the game on the Hard drive for performance boosts (not all games and systems get it but leave it an option, maybe even allow me to install the game and then use the game as a boot disc but the game must remain in the system)

    I can't load music from my disc unless it's a music cd, I own a couple hundred cds, I use mp3s for ease of use, I have my top 200+ songs on a single cd, now the 360 wants me to insert every CD I own to rerip them to get those songs?

    All this shit should at least have a way to achieve it. I can live with out backups and OSes, but region coding stuff makes the modchip necessary. Microsoft knows that they lose money on systems, so which is better? Forcing me to buy two systems to play games in two regions or buying one system and spending the other 400 dollars on games in the second region?

    If I could ignore region codes on a system and install games for speed benefit, I wouldn't have a reason to get a mod chip except if my video games were destroyed or stolen from me and Microsoft or the developer didn't sell those games any more.